Openness Survey

I'm toying with the idea of trying to take tools for web-based collaboration and aggregation of structured content, and using those tools to rate charities in terms of their openness and transparency. Then I could feed those ratings into a system for automatically sending substantial monthly donations to the most highly rated organizations. Here's more on the idea...

The world wide web and the trend towards openness

The advent of the world wide web in the 1990s fundamentally changed how people get information, and what information was conveniently available. The web made it possible for organizations to easily share content that in the past would have only been available by mail, or in libraries, or by visiting the organization's own archives.

Now, in 2005, most good-sized organizations maintain web sites where they publish copies of all the information that they used to make available in brochures and reports. Basically, most organizations use the web to publish "brochure sites". A few intrepid organizations have started to use the web to share not just brochures, but a wide variety of other documents that represent the day-to-day workings of the organization.

The web, and the emergence of all sorts of content management and publishing software, have made it possible for organizations to work in a way that simply wasn't possible 10 years ago. I believe that we're now in a period of cultural change, where cultural norms are catching up with what's technically possible. People are beginning to expect public organizations to operate more publicly. It's no longer okay for elected government officials to have closed-door meetings with industry executives. And, soon, it will no longer be okay for public charities to operate behind closed doors.

Openness surveys, openness scores, and openness-based funding

I see these changes as positive, and I'd like to do what I can to encourage them. One idea I've had is to try to reward non-profit organizations that take a leading role in making their day-to-day operations as open and transparent as possible.

I'd like start by assembling a small list of 20 or 30 organizations that seem like ones that I'd like to fund (based on criteria about what efforts are doing the most good, as described in on the goals page). Using a survey like the one below, we could gather facts about how each of these different organizations operates. The surveys could be completed either by me, or by other volunteers, or by people at the organizations themselves. The surveys could be filled out using a web-based form on this site, and the results stored in some kind of a database that could be browsed and updated by people visiting the site.

Each organization would end up with an openness "score", based on the answers from the survey. A very open organization might score a 82, where a less open organization might only score a 24. These openness scores could be combined with other rating information — such as the ratings provided by Charity Navigator, or our own ratings based on estimates of program effectiveness (perhaps measured in units of "lives saved" or DALYs (Disability Adjusted Life Years). The result would be an aggregate score for each charity. We could make monthly donations to the charities based on their scores — for example, with the highest scoring charity getting $1,000 per month for as long as it stays in first place, and the runners up getting $500 or $250 a month.

Example survey questions

Basic website content
Does the website include:	No, not really	Partially	Yes (give URL)
the name and address of the organization?
phone numbers and email addresses for the organization?
background info about the mission and goals of the organization?
background info about the organization's projects?
photos of the organization's offices, and of any other facilities the organization maintains?
People
Does the website include:	No, not really	Partially	Yes (give URL)
a list of the people serving on the Board of Directors?
a list of the officers of the organization?
a list of all of the employees?
a list of all of the paid consultants?
a list of all of the volunteers?
photos and short bios of all the people who do work for the organization?
Governance
Does the website include:	No, not really	Partially	Yes (give URL)
a copy of the organization's bylaws?
a copy of the articles of incorporation?
a copy of the organization's policy on equal opportunity employment?
copies of all of the other official written policies of the organization?
IRS info (for U.S. organizations)
Does the website include:	No, not really	Partially	Yes (give URL)
the organization's United States Employer ID Number (EIN) (also called a Federal Tax Identification Number), if the organization is based in the U.S.?
copies of organization's IRS Form 990, and all other forms filed with the IRS, if the organization is based in the U.S.?
Accounting
Does the website include:	No, not really	Partially	Yes (give URL)
annual financial reports?
annual reports of compensation received by members of the Board of Directors?
annual reports of salary and benefits for officers of the organization?
annual reports of salary and benefits paid to all employees?
annual reports of payments made to contractors?
annual reports detailing the assets and investments held by the organization?
Legal
Does the website include:	No, not really	Partially	Yes (give URL)
copies of all the legal agreements entered into by the organization (including leases, employment agreements, service agreements, etc.)?
Privacy and transparency policies
Does the organization have:	No, not really	Partially	Yes (give URL)
a written privacy policy, signed by the officers and the board of directors, that details what types of information the organization will strive to keep from publicly disclosing (for example, employee health records or employee performance evaluations)?
a written transparency policy, signed by the officers and the board of directors, that details what types of information the organization will strive to always publicly disclose (for example, meeting minutes from board meetings)?
Meeting notes
Does the website include:	No, not really	Partially	Yes (give URL)
copies of meeting agendas and meeting minutes for all meetings of the Board of Directors?
copies of meeting agendas and meeting minutes for all of the "all hands" or general staff meetings?
copies of meeting agendas and meeting minutes for department-level staff meetings?
copies of meeting agendas and meeting minutes for all meetings between officers of the organization and outside organizations?
a list of the dates and locations of meetings for which there are not meeting notes posted on the website?
Email archives
Does the website include:	No, not really	Partially	Yes (give URL)
copies of all of the email messages sent and received by officers of the organization?
copies of all of the email messages sent and received by the staff and volunteers?
Work product
Does the website include:	No, not really	Partially	Yes (give URL)
copies of all the reports written by staff members?
copies of all the other work products developed by the organization (for example: spreadsheets, books, brochures, artwork, computer programs, patents, policies, processes, instructions, to-do lists)?
some sort of "open content" license (such as a Creative Commons license) that makes all of the work product of the organization freely available to the public?
File formats and addressing — availability and accessibility
Does each document have its own unique URL?
Does the website follow common accessibility guidelines, such as the United States Section 508 Guidelines, or the W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines? Have all the pages on the site been tested with a validator like the "Bobby" validator at Watchfire.com
Is all of the content on the website available in open-standard file formats that dozens of software products support and that almost anybody with a computer can read, rather than proprietary formats offered by individual software products? For example, is the content available in formats like .html, .txt, and .mp3, rather than formats like Word .doc and Excel .xls?
Does each document have its own unique URL?
Subscription options
Can an outsider stay abreast of changes to the website by subscribing to an RSS feed of all changes?
Can an outsider stay abreast of changes to the website by subscribing to an email mailing list of all changes?
Historical record
Does the website offer a fossil record of historical documents? Is it the case that if a document was ever posted to the website, then it will still be publicly available somewhere in the website's "graveyard" or "attic" space? For living documents or web pages that change over time, is it always possible to see all the earlier versions of the documents?
Does the organization have a written transparency policy in which it undertakes to never erase anything from the historical record?
Does the website use "permalink" URLs, so that once a document is published under some initial URL, it will always be available at that same URL?
Outsider contributions
Does the website offer features that allow outsiders to add content to the site, post messages, and attach comments to any bit of content that's been published by the organization itself?
Does the website allow outside volunteers to do real work for the organization, by signing up for tasks listed on the site and then doing the work and possibly delivering a finished work product to the site?
Recursive transparency
Does the website offer links to the websites of any other organizations the receive grants from this organization, and links to the websites of any organizations that provide services that this organization pays for?
If you "follow the money" from this organization to the organizations that the money flows to, and you assess those organizations in terms of their levels of openness and transparency, how do they rate?