Making charity effectiveness transparent: building a stakeholder-focused framework of reporting

Effectiveness in achieving mission is fundamental to evaluating charity performance, and is of central concern to stakeholders who fund, regulate and otherwise engage with such organisations. Exploring the meaning of transparency in the context of stakeholder engagement, and utilising previous research and authoritative sector discussion, this paper develops a novel framework of transparent, stakeholder-focused effectiveness reporting. It is contended that such reporting can assist the charity sector in discharging accountability, gaining legitimacy, and in sharpening mission-centred managerial decision making. Then applying this to UK charities’ publicly-available communications, it highlights significant challenges and weaknesses in current effectiveness reporting.