The Benefacts project has come to an end. This free public website will be taken down on the 14th of February and the company will cease operations a month later. Read more.

LONG READ

Benefacts is signing out

Benefacts goes into the sunset

Patricia Quinn, MD

25 January, 2022

Benefacts is a social enterprise established in 2014 at the behest of the Minister for Public Expenditure & Reform and with co-funding from the Ireland Funds and The Atlantic Philanthropies to make the work of all Irish nonprofits more transparent and more accessible.

Benefacts has come to the end of its funding relationship with its principal sponsor the Department of Public Expenditure & Reform (PER). Under the terms of a funding agreement made at the end of 2021, we are now actively engaged in terminating all contracts and disposing of assets with a view to the company ceasing trading on 15th March. Our website will come down on 14th February and our staff, currently working out their notice, will be redundant from the 31st March.

In this final post, we would like to acknowledge the support and encouragement from our many supporters and celebrate the achievements of the project, in line with the expectations of our funders in Government and philanthropies.

Benefacts Timeline

Benefacts deliverables

We agreed with our original funders that Benefacts would create these public goods:

Information and understanding

 Ready access to comprehensive information would help the public, donors and other stakeholders better understand and support the work of nonprofits

Public confidence and trust

 The public could see where public money is being spent in their name

Policy intelligence

 Funders, policy-makers and other external stakeholders would have an accessible source of high-quality financial and governance data* on the sector which would over time reduce oversight costs, support more effective decision-making and assist Government in designing and delivering better services that support the goal of achieving the best possible outcomes for services users.
*Data that was collected consistently over time, allowing cross-organisational, cross-sectoral, international and trend-based analysis, as well as other bespoke reports)

e-Government

 Nonprofits and their stakeholders could specify web-based services that would simplify regulatory/grant compliance, reduce transaction costs, and otherwise facilitate business relationships using ICTs

Business intelligence

 The sector itself would have access to reliable data helping individual nonprofits and their lead bodies to make better-informed business decisions, improve their access to donors, services and markets

Government’s reform agenda

 Benefacts services would support various actions as set out in the plans for Public Sector Reform and Civil Service Renewal – e.g. commissioning, open data and better data management.

The three funders ranked these benefits in different ways. For DPER the biggest gain was in policy intelligence. For The Atlantic Philanthropies, it was public confidence and trust in the work of the sector. For the Ireland Funds, it was greater information and understanding in Ireland and overseas about the work of Irish nonprofits.

Here’s how they prioritised their expectations in relative terms.

Source: Benefacts

Benefacts solutions

As time went on, other State agencies provided support for the development of data, analysis and analytic solutions.

  • The Central Statistics Office relied on our data to ensure the sector was fully represented in the National Accounts, since financial and governance data is available for only a fraction of nonprofits registered as charities.
  • Revenue and Data.gov.ie took a daily feed for their analysis and disclosure purposes
  • Sector lead bodies, individual nonprofits, public and private sector organisations commissioned business analysis reports. See full list here.
  • Continued support from philanthropies allowed us to produce widely-respected free reports on the sector and its component parts.

Public information

Using internationally-recognised standards to create our classification system, we harvested thousands of records from many public sources to create the Database of Irish Nonprofits and we published the most up-to-date information with a free listing for 20,000 nonprofits, updated daily.

Currently, www.benefacts.ie attracts 15,000 unique visitors each month.

Mr Paschal Donohoe TD, Minister for PER, welcomed www.benefacts.ie in May 2016

Mr Paschal Donohoe TD

Mr Paschal Donohoe TD

Minister for PER

“this fits very well alongside the number of initiatives that my department also has under way in relation to the whole open data world. I see so clearly already the multiplicity of data sources that … in many cases sit in different silos. [There is] huge benefit to be gained by integrating that together by allowing people who receive services, people who fund services, people who deliver services, to be more aware of how rich the data is that is generated by them engaging with each other”

 

Read the Minister’s remarks in full.

Public understanding

In 2017, we began our annual sector report series. This documented the governance, economic and employment profile of all of Ireland’s civil society organisations – however regulated or funded. Each year as we found additional sources of data the number of entities in the database grew, starting at 19,000 in 2017 and reaching 34,000 in our 2021 report.

Ms Emily O’Reilly, European Ombudsman, welcomed the new levels of digital accessibility of nonprofits data speaking at the launch of Benefacts first annual Nonprofit Sector Analysis Report .

Ms Emily O’Reilly

Ms Emily O’Reilly

European Ombudsman

“Some might argue that central government has access or should have access to this type of information anyway and perhaps query the added value. Yet the point of Benefacts, I think, is that by opening up this information, by offering it in ways that are comprehensive and logical, other minds can set to work on these matters and feed into government decision making. In addition, it may well be that a central database will enable more cross cutting work and simple joined up thinking across all relevant Government Departments.”

Read Ms O’Reilly’s remarks in full

 

Public confidence and trust

Speaking at the launch of the project, Mr Brendan Howlin TD, Minister for PER said accountability and transparency were at the heart of the Government’s reform agenda.

Mr Brendan Howlin TD

Mr Brendan Howlin TD

Minister for PER

“Everybody stands to gain from this initiative. Government departments and agencies, nonprofits themselves but above all the public has a legitimate interest in knowing more about exactly where the public’s money is being spent.”

Policy intelligence

Since 2016, we have provided more than 93 datasets, web services or benchmark analysis reports to State bodies, Government Departments and nonprofit lead bodies. See the full list of services or reports here.

Dr Oonagh Breen, who Chaired the recent Independent Review of Charity Regulation in Northern Ireland says

Dr Oonagh Breen

Dr Oonagh Breen

Chair of the Independent Review of Charity Regulation in Northern Ireland

“As a professor of law, a researcher and as a policy advisor both to non-profit and to government bodies, I have first-hand experience of Benefacts data. In an age where data is key to understanding and resolving problems in every sector and good data should be critical to good decision-making, particularly when public funds are at stake, Benefacts has been invaluable in both mapping and populating the world of Irish non-profits.

The recently published Independent Review of Charity Regulation in NI 2022 specifically points to the value of a body like Benefacts and recommends that a similar mapping exercise to that conducted by Benefacts be carried out there. It is all the more ironic that the DPER should withdraw funding from a body that has added such value in terms of raw data and published reports in the period of its existence.”

e-Government

Working with Tusla, we have customised a web-based data analytics solution that allows them to review, interrogate and analyse five years’ worth of detailed financial, governance and compliance data for all of the nonprofit organisations with which they (and other State bodies) have funding relationships.

Working with Rethink Ireland, we developed a valued solution to meet their need for standard governance, financial and regulatory information on hundreds of nonprofits seeking funding. This simplified the grant-making process for funder and grantees alike.

Rethink Ireland’s CEO Ms Deirdre Mortell commented on the value of this, speaking at the launch of Benefacts second report on Charitable and Philanthropic Giving in Ireland, 30th November 2021

Ms Deirdre Mortell

Ms Deirdre Mortell

Rethink Ireland’s CEO

“When Rethink Ireland is selecting grantees, we have to check to make sure this is a good organisation to make a grant to.

We very happily commission that work from Benefacts, who give us really reliable data that we wouldn’t be able to get otherwise.”

Business intelligence

Nonprofits have used our data for a variety of purposes – see the list of recent services here.

Mr Paddy Coyne

Mr Paddy Coyne

CEO i-donate.ie

“iDonate directs people to Benefacts database on a daily basis. Some of these people are potential donors questioning the status of an organisation, while others are newly setup not-for-profits. Many thousands of prospective donors use Benefacts to find the necessary information to justify making a donation. In 2021 alone, the value of these donations to nonprofits was €19m”

Ms Clíona Saidléar

Ms Clíona Saidléar

Executive Director, Rape Crisis Network Ireland (RCNI)

“RCNI greatly values the public information collated and published by Benefacts. We commissioned a report on our own organisation which Benefacts provided free to us and were surprised by the level of additional insight this report gave to us about ourselves. Our board used this report in reflecting on our strategic planning and direction.”

Public Reform agenda

In cooperation with six State bodies, we developed Benefacts Analytics and Benefacts Who Funds What in 2019/20 to provide registered users with access to high quality data in granular detail – supporting cross-agency data sharing, financial control, public disclosure and risk management.

Read more about Benefacts Analytics and Who Funds What

All links

 

Print this page