whythawk ratings: measuring effective development

1.
(Comments)

...in economic democracy. Our biggest critique of capitalism is that it controls lives without giving us a say. Organisations like unions are a corrective. Mugabe is a dictator on his last legs, t...

2. Government and Business, Panic and Rescue
(Analysis/Analysis)

...ing them well. The worst are those that want to own and do everything. Now, though, it is not just individual organisations that have become complex, but the interrelationships between those organi...

3. After Conceit: Recovering from the Credit Crunch
(Analysis/Analysis)

...g a mechanism for interacting and settling disagreements. Capitalism is also an act of reason. All collective organisations require that one have faith in the leadership who claim to represent that...

4. The tragedy of Burma, should we help, how to help
(Analysis/Analysis)

...e have followed. The international community has been swift in their response. The UN and other disaster-relief organisations have collected donations across the world. Any other government would be...

5. Everything gets tested but political ideas, they become policy
(Analysis/Analysis)

...tionalise whatever is left over. These are all quite dramatic ideas. There is a wealth of evidence produced by organisations as diverse as the World Bank, Freedom House, and the Economist Intelligen...

6. The spectre of loyalty over ability
(Analysis/Analysis)

...rnments lose their best staff to companies and they, in turn, lose their best minds to sparkling new start-ups. Organisations that don't support brave innovators quickly lose them as they move to...

7. After Enron: the Corporate Governance of Corporate Social Investment
(Analysis/Analysis)

... held that companies outsource their reputational risk when they choose to associate themselves with development organisations. The relationship is lopsided with companies exercising little or no cor...

8. The tragedy of innovation: how brilliant ideas are criminalised
(Analysis/Analysis)

...have seen how pesticides and herbicides have harmed our environment and made us sick."African civil society organisations at the World Social Forum in Nairobi, 2007 Reading Farming Solutions, a ...

9. Freedom of speech is fine, just don't try to use it, says Patricia de Lille
(Analysis/Analysis)

...ate MXIT and Internet blogging, where members of the public can with impunity slander and defame individuals and organisations they do not like." "Can" – note that word.  No...

10. Government to gag South African bloggers?
(Analysis/Analysis)

...he department of Home Affairs declared, "We prefer the media to regulate itself but in the event that those organisations can't do that, then what?" Then what, indeed? Anton Harber, Prof...

11. Jobs are from Mars, Business is from Venus
(Analysis/Analysis)

It is astonishing the lengths that humanitarian and development organisations will go to avoid talking about business, or to businesses. International Labour Organisation (ILO) Director-General Juan S

12. Hedging and bundling; improving the efficiency of microlending
(Analysis/Analysis)

... risk to a single project or a single year’s activities. On the other hand, if agencies worked with other organisations to present a single unified request for capital covering an integrated ap...

13. Demonstration Enterprise Development Consultant B
(Ratings Demonstration/Demonstration)

...e Umsobomvu voucher program. They are based in Langa and, as such, are one of very few enterprise development organisations based within their target market.  Consultation facilities are limit...

14. Demonstration Health HIV / AIDS Orphanage A
(Ratings Demonstration/Demonstration)

...d. Operational Effectiveness The level of care enjoyed by the children is exceptional and exceeds most other organisations operating in this sector. Children are gregarious and healthy. Demonstrat...

15. Demonstration Table of Ratings
(Ratings Demonstration/Demonstration)

...his demonstration table of rated entites is laid out in a similar fashion to that presented to subscribers. The organisations listed below are hypothetical and are not related to any real organisati...

16. Development organisations need to engage with ratings agencies
(Analysis/Analysis)

...inning the Nobel Peace Prize has dramatically increased the interest in microfinance solutions to poverty.  Organisations across the globe are reinventing themselves as banks to catch some of the...

17. Climate Change: measurement, responsibility and risk
(Analysis/Analysis)

... responsible for global warming. This clash is comparable to Whythawk’s experiences in rating development organisations.  Too often the response has been, “Why are you rating us?&nbs...

18. Rating to create a market; questions and answers
(Analysis/Analysis)

...of growth; rolling out enterprise development ratings in Gauteng, and developing a new model for rating HIV/AIDS organisations, is pushing us hard. We have also been on an informal road-show introduc...

19. What happens when they hate you? The impact of charity.
(Analysis/Analysis)

...ions are a tricky thing.  The development sector has been promoted by pop stars and film icons; development organisations clamour to be seen and associated with that glamour.  They should kn...

20. "Heads or Tails" ... resolution to a difficult choice
(Analysis/Analysis)

... is found in the public tender process. Determined to support a reforming society, these projects are awarded to organisations and individuals assessed as suitably disadvantaged. The trouble is, yet a...

21. Western Cape economic development support agencies lack the capacity to halve unemployment
(Analysis/Analysis)

...e performance of enterprise and small business development consultants in the Western Cape, South Africa. Rated organisations collectively managed to create approximately 8 200 jobs in the past 12 mo...

22. We're from Mars and we want to help: four lessons in development
(Analysis/Analysis)

...ed to visit us, but they don’t want us near them. And this is the way that many international development organisations treat the world’s poor.  Amongst the demands by ActionAid, in...

23. Enterprise Development and Employment: Experiences in South Africa and South Eastern Europe
(Analysis/Analysis)

...neurship and Employment in Bucharest, Romania to the Workshop on Training for Employability in Thessaloniki, the organisations focus on addressing the unemployment problem. Some of the trends already...

24. The Martians Really Care: four points to govern development
(Analysis/Ideas and Challenges)

...ectives of the capitalist community at large.  Capitalists enjoy the fruit of development but developmental organisations consider capitalists to be unworthy unless as a source of cash. Developm...

25. How do we prepare nonprofit organisations for the long term?
(Analysis/Analysis)

The core principle of social benefit investment is the empowerment of individuals to the point where the intervention by benefactors is no longer required. That is to say, social benefit investment sh

26. May I have the bill, please? A lesson in wilful ignorance ...
(Analysis/Analysis)

...er the frequent indignity of having their crasser habits exposed in local newspapers or blogs.  Development organisations can get away with even lower standards of care since their clients, on th...

27. Should charitable organisations be allowed to compete with businesses?
(Analysis/Analysis)

Charities and development organisations frequently like to supplement their incomes from donors by selling items.  Some organisations have become major brands in their own right (such as Oxfam or

28. The lack of feedback and accountability is fatal to aid effectiveness
(Analysis/Analysis)

...rutiny and tough controls (like Sarbanes Oxley)? At this moment there is limited scrutiny placed on development organisations.  As William Easterly, Professor of Economics at New York University...

29. Rating Copyright and Terms of Use
(FAQs/Rating FAQs)

...nisation. Whythawk receives fees from issuers, insurers, guarantors, other obligors, and underwriters for rating organisations. The assignment, publication, or dissemination of a rating by Whythawk sh...

30. No matter how hard you try bad environments lead to bad results
(Analysis/Analysis)

...t Ireland enjoyed in 1973 was a sudden change in the environment it had experienced to date. Social development organisations usually focus on individual support since it is difficult to change envir...

31. Millennium Development Goals and the Measurement of Change
(Analysis/Analysis)

...cantly easier for a private measurement organisation, like Whythawk, to offer an opinion on how well development organisations are meeting their self-appointed tasks than it will be for them to do so ...

32. The end of wild seafood and the myth of "free"
(Analysis/Analysis)

...ich are given away – you guessed it – free.  If the services were truly free then none of these organisations would be permanently attempting to raise money. Call it a rule: the qua...

33. X Challenge: Develop the cheapest most effective school
(Analysis/Analysis)

...t us. 1 Whythawk has not rated either organisation and so expresses no opinion on the effectiveness of these organisations ...

34. The poor have never had it so good ... now what?
(Analysis/Analysis)

... corruption. All of these new charitable foundations, started by entrepreneurs, rely on third-party development organisations started by socialists.  They’re speaking different languages. ...

35. Investor Orientation for Development Ratings
(Events/Events)

...; as well as other rating tools and guidelines – Whythawk welcomes suggestions from investors, development organisations and market participants....

36. Guide to Donating
(Analysis/Donation Tips)

...ce results. But don't just take the CEO's compensation at face value; benchmark it against similar-sized organisations engaged in similar work and located in the same region of the country. Pu...

37. Responsibility Reputation Risk - a conference on corporate social investment
(Events/Events)

...onal risk; this time in fields significantly outside of their expertise or experience. Charities and development organisations are at significant risk from a lack of oversight and poor financial contr...

38. Poverty: when second best isn't good enough
(Analysis/Analysis)

...ted to use scaled-down versions as a substitute since they are deemed incapable of development. If MIT and other organisations really aim to assist the poor then they would develop their products to b...

39. 7 What are all the uses of ratings?
(FAQs/Rating FAQs)

...use is that it allows for the limited amount of money available for economic development to be channelled to the organisations most capable and most efficient at delivering that service. Sector report...

40. 6 How does Whythawk remain impartial and objective?
(FAQs/Rating FAQs)

...ofessions that have insight into the sector at hand. Whythawk is not a professional fundraiser. We do not charge organisations to be rated, nor do we compete in the same market. We are not involved in...

41. 3 How does the Whythawk approach differ from other organisations?
(FAQs/Rating FAQs)

...ector which interests you, and into the best of breed within that sector. Whythawk's approach is not to rate organisations at random, but to conduct a thorough analysis of a specific development s...

42. Senescence, the death of development
(Analysis/Analysis)

...he objectives of the capitalist community at large. Capitalists enjoy the fruit of development but developmental organisations consider capitalists to be unworthy unless as a source of cash. This crea...

43. The Feedback Loop
(Analysis/Analysis)

...y people are treated like children: "we know what’s best for you." Just like cancer, development organisations spiral out of control in a developing economy, replacing healthy institut...

44. 1 Why are development ratings necessary?
(FAQs/Rating FAQs)

...entral ideas of development still rely on instinct rather than quantitive data and feedback. Many of the funding organisations battle to give away sufficient money each year to maintain their tax-exem...

45. 2 What is the difference between 'accreditation' and 'ratings'?
(FAQs/Rating FAQs)

...what they promise. Importantly: 'ratings' compliment 'accreditation', they don't replace it. Organisations are still going to have to prove that they have the requisite abilities. ...

46. Research Reports, eBooks and Ideas
(Static Content)

... free reader from Adobe. Sector Report Overviews Whythawk's purpose is not only to rate individual organisations but to aggregate these findings by related organisations and by region. T...

47. Unlock the Value in Emerging Markets
(Static Content)

...ess expand your knowledge with aggregated reports that cover a deep and comprehensive review of problems and the organisations offering the best solutions select the most appropriate sectors and organ...

48. Get Rated
(Static Content)

In formal commercial economic environments investors rely on information provided by independent rating organisations to assess the risk and potential of the vast number and range of companies competi

49. Terms of Use
(Static Content)

...nisation. Whythawk receives fees from issuers, insurers, guarantors, other obligors, and underwriters for rating organisations. The assignment, publication, or dissemination of a rating by Whythawk sh...

50. Why Use Whythawk
(Static Content)

... fortune at the bottom of the pyramid.  Whythawk generates meaningful feedback by rating social development organisations in terms of accountability and effectiveness, and presenting the agencies...