On December 28, 2011, IIFD summarized results of its first monitoring of websites belonging to community foundations. One should realize that community foundations, as grantmakers, are directly influencing solution of socially significant problems in various Russian regions and post-Soviet countries. Therefore, informational openness for general public is a primary importance task for such a foundation. The IIFD experts also have taken into account the fact that the Russian model of community foundations is now “under construction” so that its openness study becomes especially acute. Online informational openness helps to establish public trust in community foundations’ activities.

Community Foundations: Monitoring – 2011

A community foundation is one of modern efficient form of philanthropy: a grantmaking foundation solving social problems on competitive basis within a local area.

Community foundations perform a number of socially significant functions positive for society development, such as: improving life quality in a local community; funding local NGO projects of importance and priority for local community; motivating innovative projects; establishing dialog between state, business, and society; corporative charity development for Russian business companies; raising private and corporative donations for solving local social problems.

We should point that in Russia, the history of community foundations is just a bit older than ten years. It is especially important that the Russian model of community foundations is now “under construction”. Sustainable development for charity in Russia, civil society strengthening, formation of socially oriented businesses, and solution of many acute social problems significantly depend on such organizations. A crucial feature of community foundations is that they follow the principle of subsidiarity, solving social problems at the lowest possible (local) level; this allows them to organize competitions for supporting various programs and projects knowingly and efficiently. To establish public trust in community foundations, their activities should be, first of all, independent on state power, businesses, and various organizations or individuals, as well as transparent and open. Internet presence is an indicator of a community foundation transparency and openness, together with completeness, timeliness, and аctuality of information on the foundation’s activities placed at its official website.

To define informational openness level of Russian community foundations, the IIFD monitored official websites of 18 foundations – members of the Partnership of Community Foundations from November 21, till December 24, 2011.

The monitoring aimed to perform complex evaluation of community foundations’ official websites’ informational openness level by means of analyzing their quantitative and qualitative features. To study the websites, the web content analysis method was used by experts studying the websites online to define presence or absence of specific information.

The websites were monitored following the methodology developed by the IIFD with support of the Evolution&Philanthropy company. The monitoring included 53 topical parameters relevant for community foundations, evaluated for information presence, completeness, actuality, navigation accessibility, HTML accessibility, and file accessibility.
The following information categories were evaluated:

1. General information on a community foundation:

• contacts;
• information on staff;
• information on members of the foundation managing and control bodies;
• information on founders;
• information on managing and control bodies.

2. Information on the foundation activities:

• procedures for support provision from the foundation;
• information on project competitions held;
• information on current projects;
• information on past projects;
• information for donors, sponsors, adherents, and volunteers;
• reporting information, including that on the foundations’ funding sources.

The monitoring resulted in integrated scores for community foundations’ websites reflecting their openness level. For each community foundation monitored, information access rate is calculated, and the information access rating for all community foundations monitored is formed.

The monitoring had three stages:

1. Preparatory stage, when the list of monitoring parameters was formed with participation of community foundations’ representatives;
2. Implementation stage, including initial evaluation of websites and the following communication period with score review;
3. Final stage: summarizing of the monitoring results.

Below, the main monitoring results come.

Table 1
Informational openness rating for community foundations – 2011
(before the communication period)

After initial evaluation, representatives of community foundations were provided with possibility to improve their websites by means of placing more complete and actual information at it. From December 12 to December 24, IIFD experts advised (by means of EXMO automated system) community foundations on website information filling. At that time, if placing new information at their websites in accordance with the IIFD’s parameter list, community foundations could change their evaluation scores and positions in the openness rating. Five community foundations take active part in the communication period and increased their rates. These are the following:

• “Samarskaya Gubernia” Foundation
• Community Foundation Togliatti
• Penza community foundation “Civil Unity”
• “Sodeistvie” foundation for supporting social initiatives (Perm)
• Regional Information and Resource Foundation (Ulyanovsk)

The final informational openness rating is the following:

Table 2
Informational openness rating for community foundations – 2011
(after the communication period)

The monitoring revealed that most of community foundations place at their websites contact data, procedures for support provision, and reporting information. At the same time, websites often lack information on foundations’ managing and control bodies and their members, on founders, and on funding sources.

Official websites of community foundations appear to be most important sources of information on their activities. Contents of a community foundation’s website allows to evaluate its openness or closeness, as well as possibilities for citizens and various social subjects to get information on its activities. The IIFD’s monitoring has allowed to develop a number of guidelines for community foundations to improve contents of their official websites as a major condition for citizens to exercise their rights to information access.

More detailed information is available at the Russian page.

Topical Link:

• Partnership of Community Foundations