With 169,000 registered charities in England and Wales, finding the right
one to support can be a tough decision. To help you and your family refine your
search, GuideStar UK has enlisted the help of social psychologist Cliff Arnall.
In collaboration with Cliff, GuideStar UK has produced a formula that isolates
a number of factors for you and your family to consider when selecting which
charities to support. Using this formula will give you some example search
results to help you to explore your charitable side. Once you have tried the
formula you can use our simple search or advanced search to explore the full
GuideStar UK database of charities using your own personal search terms.
Step 1 : Where do charities work?
Charities work from the global to the local level. So the first step is to
decide whether you want to support charities that operate worldwide, nationally
or locally. This is categorised in the formula as:
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Worldwide - charities operating worldwide.
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National - charities operating nationally.
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Local - charities operating locally.
Step 2 : What do charities do?
Charities undertake many activities to help individuals, society and the
environment. So the second step is to decide what type of activity to support.
These activities are categorised in the formula as:
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Personal - such as activities relating to health, medical
and disability issues.
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Emotional - such as activities promoting the arts and
music.
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Social - such as activities relating to alleviating
poverty and protecting rights.
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Environmental - such as activities relating to the protection
of the environment and animals.
Step 3 : How do charities do their work?
Charities work in a range of ways. Many charities are reactive and provide
services that directly support people with problems. Others seek to address the
root cause of problems and are proactive by undertaking research and
campaigning. These are recognised in the formula as:
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Proactive - campaigning and research.
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Reactive - providing services.
Step 4 : Explore the results
When you hit the search button GuideStar UK will produce a list of charities
that match your selections from its database of 167,000 charities. If you want
to explore one of these charities just click on the name and it will take you
to the charity's GuideStar UK entry which includes information on the charity's
activities, organisation and finances.
If you find a charity that you want to support, then please look at Step 5 and 6
below.
Step 5 : How do you want to help the charity?
Different charities need different kinds of support and there is often more
than one way to become involved with a charity. This part of the formula
encourages you to think about the way you want to become involved. Would you
like to give up some free time to volunteer for the organisation, or do you
wish to be active in your support and run a marathon; this could also include
an element of campaigning support, such as letter-writing. Or perhaps you would
prefer to make a donation of money or other goods? You can help a charity by
providing:
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Money.
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Time.
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Money and Time.
Step 6 : How often do you want to help the charity?
The final consideration in all of this is whether you prefer to get involved
with a one-off activity or donation; or sustain your involvement over time by
giving by direct debit or volunteering on a regular basis. Do you want your
involvement to be:
Please visit our Giving and
Volunteering pages to find out more about the different ways to support
charities.
Advanced Search
Once you've used the formula to refine your search and help you consider the
criteria that are important to you when choosing a charity you can then use
GuideStar UK's advanced search engine to narrow the search even further. This
allows you to state what area or town you would like to focus on, a charity
name, keywords you would like to highlight and the size of the charity in terms
of the income they receive. Try an advanced
search.