Do you make sure that the charities you work with have a low percentage admin fee?

Charities, like social enterprises, are businesses, and to run a sustainable and successful business, you need to invest in great people and tools to build awareness and drive growth. The huge difference is, charities, like social enterprises, use their skills and passion to raise money for a cause that helps people in need, unlike the general goal of business, which is to make money to make their shareholders and investors wealthier.

At Thankyou, we’re proud to partner with sustainable charities around the world that are taking an innovative approach to development. We have a comprehensive due diligence process when it comes to choosing which charity partners we allocate funds to. That includes understanding their current and future overheads, the costs involved to reach a person in poverty, and staff remuneration policies.

We partner with charities that are about maximising impact outcomes both now and into the future for the lives of some of the most vulnerable populations in the world. This means employing and retaining skilled and values-led team members who are thinking strategically about how to grow so they can make the most impact possible, or having systems which ultimately avoid organisation inefficiencies. This also means that they are constantly monitoring metrics like how much it costs to serve someone with their solution (which is derived from the total expenses of an organisation divided by the amount of people they reach). This is important, as they know their program is a short-term solution, and in order to exit sustainably and create a sustainable solution, a scale partner (like a government agency or private business) must be able to adopt and financially replicate their program.

Ultimately, we focus on whether they are impact driven, have a sustainable solution, and have impact on the communities they serve, rather than first judging the performance of an organisation based upon the expenses it spends on its overheads.

You can read more about our model on our website.