RAEX compiles ranking of charitable foundations
MOSCOW. Feb 28 (Interfax) - Rating agency RAEX and the Association of Rating Makers have presented the second ranking of charitable nonprofit organizations (NPO) in Russia by partnership potential. The ranking includes 819 nonprofits.
The main ranking consists of two parts, one of which includes private and corporate NPOs and the other fund-raising nonprofits. The goal of the project is to provide a clear, objective and accurate guideline for potential partner NPOs, identify the leaders in the sector and establish performance standards.
In order to compile the ranking by partnership potential, RAEX experts assessed the financial, organizational and methodological capabilities, media activity and influence of charitable NPOs. All of these factors should be looked at when making decisions on donations. Foundations with a high level of partnership potential can ensure that money will be spent effectively on what the donor wants.
The ranking factors in data on media activity and information transparency for 2021, and financial results for 2018, 2019 and 2020, the last year for which public financial statements of NPOs were available at the time of publication.
The combined revenues of the 819 charitable NPOs included in the current ranking for 2020 nearly doubled compared to the pilot ranking, to 88 billion rubles, of which corporate and private NPOs accounted for 50 billion rubles. Of course, the number of NPOs in the ranking also nearly tripled from 293 in the first ranking, but this is not the only reason for the increase in revenue. This sector is growing rapidly, despite the global crisis due to the pandemic. Overall donations to private and corporate foundations rose by 21% and donations to fund-raising nonprofits increased by 14.3%.
"We carefully analysed the experience of the pilot ranking of charitable NPOs published in 2020. And although the overall structure of the method was preserved, we fundamentally rethought the NPO transparency unit and unit dealing with analysis of their media activity, to measure which we used the database of the SCAN-Interfax reputation management and media analysis system," RAEX CEO Dmitry Grishankov said.
The Vladimir Potanin Foundation, which topped the 2020 ranking, retained its lead among private and corporation foundations in 2021 with revenue of more than 2.3 billion rubles. The top five of the new ranking also include the Timchenko Foundation, the Investment in the Future Foundation, the Art, Science and Sport Foundation and the Pochet Foundation (Honor Foundation).
The top fund-raising foundation was Rusfond, which also led the pilot ranking. It was followed by Podari Zhizn, Lighthouse, Vera and the Konstantin Khabensky Foundation.
A notable trend in the ranking was an increase in the transparency of nonprofits. For example, publication of annual nonfinancial reporting has become common practice for the leaders of the ranking, with reports for 2020 published by 88% of the fund-raising NPOs in the top 100. Just two years ago, only five of the top ten nonprofits published nonfinancial reports.
Another important observation is that "young" organizations devote a great deal of attention to quality disclosure of information about their activities. Half of the fund-raising NPOs in the top 30 by information transparency were founded less than eight years ago.
And most importantly, transparent NPOs were more resilient to external shocks. The top 30 fund-raising nonprofits by transparency weathered the difficult year of 2020 far better than their colleagues in the sector, as these organizations' donations increased by an average of 34% compared to average growth of 14% for all the nonprofits in the ranking.
The media activity of nonprofits is no less important. The very essence of charitable activity, as a rule, implies publicity. Both the public and those in need must be aware of the opportunities available to them thanks to the activities of nonprofits.
SCAN-Interfax data show that the leading fund-raising foundations by number of publications in the media in 2021 were Greenpeace, Rusfond, Russian Children's Foundation, Starost v Radost and Podari Zhizn. Among private and corporate NPOs, those with the largest media presence were the Vladimir Potanin Foundation, SUEK-Regionam, Art, Science and Sport Foundation, Timchenko Foundation and Obshee Delo.
In their assessment, RAEX experts used questionnaires filled out by the nonprofits themselves, public data, organizations' financial statements, and information provided by the SCAN-Interfax reputation management and media analysis system.
The project was carried out with a grant from the Russian Presidential Grants Fund. In addition to the main rankings, it includes 15 tables by area and factor. For more details, see RAEX's Rating Review journal.
RAEX (RAEX-Analytics), the largest Russian agency in the field of non-credit ratings, compiles rankings, assigns non-credit ratings, and conducts industry and market research and analytics.
