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For charities

ChangePath and you

ChangePath has benefits for both donors and for not-for-profits. The general public are often wary of giving money to charitable organisations, because they hear a lot of mixed things thanks to the mass media. This reduces the number of people willing to give to any charity.

We believe that the pool of potential donors can grow, and that by demonstrating that charities are well-run and transparent, we can convince more people to give to good causes. More importantly, we can direct funds towards well-run, transparent, sustainable charities, helping them to succeed.

As a general statement, ChangePath firmly believes that charity is an overwhelming good for society, and should be encouraged.

ChangePath has two fundamental principles:

  1. ChangePath is an independent, transparent, not-for-profit service to help people who wish to choose a charity to donate to. To remain independent, ChangePath does not accept money from charities in any way that could be seen as a conflict of interest. Rankings and scores cannot be bought.
  2. ChangePath has no political, religious, or cultural affiliation (beyond an obvious focus on Australia). All charities are treated equally and on their merits alone.

This means that we will always try to give a fair and unbiased assessment of a charity, based on facts.

Keeping ChangePath accurate

Updating and adding charity information

Creating an account on ChangePath allows charities to update their information, and add new information that would otherwise not be displayed on the page.

You can add new information (your mission, description, and how you measure your outcomes) and add outcomes you've achieved. These edits will be visible immediately to the core ChangePath site

The account also allows you to request more substantial changes to the charity information, such as changes to the name, domain, or any data that affects scoring. These changes need to be reviewed by a moderator, which is generally done within a few days.

Editing your charity information is free.

Creating an account on ChangePath

Anyone can create an account on ChangePath, but only direct employees of a charity that have the right to edit the charity's information are able to use ChangePath to edit a charity's listing.

If the email address used to create an account is directly associated with a charity, you may be given immediate access to edit that charity's information.

If your account is not given immediate access, you will need to apply to edit the charity's information. You will need to prove that you are an employee of the charity. This can be done through a proof of employment letter and a photo of a government-issued ID.

Email the necessary evidence, from the relevant email address, to the ChangePath team.

We may also require additional information to verify your identity and employment.

Features of having a ChangePath account

Once you are registered and able to edit a charity, there are a number of things that you can do:

  • Demonstrate outcomes: You can add up to three high-level outcomes that this charity aims to achieve, along with how it is tracking against these outcomes. You can set your own outcomes, give them a description, and add data for previous years to show progress over time. Adding outcomes will also earn you an outcomes seal (Bronze to Gold) which appears on your listing - see the 'rating' section below.
  • Edit basic information: You are able to edit some non-scoring data on ChangePath directly. This includes the links to the about page, donation page, and volunteering page, as well as whether the organisation is relgious.
  • Add new information: The ChangePath account allows you to add new information to ChangePath, such as your mission, how you collect feedback, and your outcomes measurement approach. By editing the 'description', you can also edit how the charity appears in ChangePath search results.
  • Request changes to core information: For more fundamental changes, such as the charity's name, ABN, and annual report information, you can fill in a form to request a change be made to the ChangePath database, and track the status of previous requests.

While ChangePath will not edit/audit the information received, it reserves the right to not publish the information if the organisation appears to be making potentially false or misleading claims which the organisation cannot provide evidence in support of if asked to do so.

Listing new charities

If your charity isn't listed on ChangePath, but you would like it to be, we're more than happy to put it online. If your charity was registered with the ACNC (you can check at the ACNC website), fill in the New Charity Form, giving the ACNC URL of the charity. If your charity is NOT listed with the ACNC, we are not able to accept it at this time. Charities/not-for-profits must also have an active website to be listed.

Using your star rating and score badge

Displaying the score badge

If you're proud of the rating your organisation has received and want to display it, you can. We currently release the score badges to charities to use for marketing purposes, with two conditions:

  1. The star rating image must link back to the relevant ChangePath page (i.e. the page for your charity).
  2. The image should not be altered.
Your score badge is available at the top of the page for your charity.

Using your ChangePath rating

Be sensible and proportionate when talking about your star rating. For example, if your charity has a 5/5 score, you can say that it has 'the maximum score possible', but you can't say it 'ranks as the best charity'. It's an award for being open, transparent, accountable and well run, but doesn't give any indication of impact or being 'better' than other charities. Use language carefully.

Our ratings

How our ratings are determined

Details on how the score and star rating in the transparency, financial stability and outcomes sections is determined can be found at the bottom of each charity's page, in the 'Detailed scoring' section.

Note that there are a number of different assessments that go into each star rating. For example, the scores of the financial criteria are determined by the following: less than two losses in the last 3 years gives 2 points, having assets greater than liabilities gives an additional 2 points, and having asset coverage over 6 months is one point. For more details about exactly how the scores are put together and where the numbers come from, see our About page.

Improving your transparency score

If your transparency score is lower than you would like, here's the quick and easy method to get the full 3/3 star rating.

  • Put your full annual reports for the current year and previous years on your website
  • Put your full financial report (Importantly, this ISN'T the summary financial report. This is the full, complete, financial report.) for the current year and previous years on your website.

That's it - pretty easy. Note that these need to be on your own website (not the ACNC). Once you've made these changes, log onto ChangePath and use the 'request a change to core information' button to note the changes you've made. A moderator get back to you once your score has been updated.

Improving your financial score

If your financial score is lower than you would like, improving it is a fair bit harder than improving the other two scores, as it relies on the financial fundamentals of your charity. However, if you have a low score due to a lack of financial information, rather than the actual finances themselves, that is easier to fix. Simply complete the relevant ACNC Annual Information Statement. Once it is online, log on to ChangePath and click the 'Request data refresh using ACNC data'. This will automatically pull across the new data from the ACNC into ChangePath.

Improving your outcomes seal

The outcomes seal is a highlight around your score badge which highlights your commitement to demonstrating good outcomes. The outcomes badge is the only part of the scoring that is controlled purely by providing additional detail to the ChangePath platform.

Log in to the ChangePath platform using your free account. The outcomes badge you will recieve is related to the level of information you have provided about your outcomes.

Bronze - Charity has added an outcomes measurement methodology, describing how you measure your outcomes

Silver - Charity has added historic data about its outcomes

Gold - Charity has added both recent and historic data about its outcomes