GuideStar is a tool for people and companies to gain information about nonprofits and all the work they do. Similar to how you use Zillow to find a house you want or LexisNexis for legal case studies for research. New research supports what GuideStar has long believed: (1) donors give more to transparent nonprofits and (2) transparent organizations tend to be stronger organizations. To help define transparency, GuideStar gives seals to nonprofits to indicate the level of transparency to the public so users can make better decisions, and encourage charitable giving.
From the new research, Professors Erica Harris of Villanova University and Dan Neely of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee found that as a group, nonprofits that earned a GuideStar Seal of Transparency averaged 53 percent more in contributions the following year compared to organizations that didn’t earn a Seal.
The Harris and Neely research aligns with GuideStar’s own—more modest—analysis:
GuideStar Nonprofit Profiles with a Gold or Platinum Seal of Transparency get twice the amount of views as profiles without Seals. In 2017, 78 percent of the nonprofits that received donations through GuideStar’s website had Seals. Also in 2017, contributions to nonprofits with Gold or Platinum Seals were 11 percent larger than those to organizations with Bronze or Silver Seals.
This is why at GPS Education Partners, we are excited to say we earned the 2018 Platinum Seal of Transparency from GuideStar! Check our our GuideStar profile at https://www.guidestar.org/profile/39-1667442.