One of the key factors that makes our charity reporting strong is the fact that the BBB Charity Standards are broad and cover a range of topics.  With the news of the spread of coronavirus across the United States on everyone’s mind, we found that one of the topics, board meeting attendance, has been on the mind of several charities.

The Centers for Disease Control have issued advisories about air travel and recommendations to avoid crowds. Given this fact, charities are understandably concerned about their planned board meetings and asking board members to travel and gather in-person.  We recently communicated with our national charity contacts, providing the following guidance regarding board member attendance.

BBB Charity Standard 3 calls for a minimum of three board meetings per fiscal year with an average of at least 50% attendance.  It further calls for at least two of these meetings to be in-person and the rest can be by phone as long as official minutes are taken. While we encourage actual, physical face-to-face participation as much as possible because we believe it keeps board members most engaged, video meetings do count as in-person meetings for purposes of meeting this standard as long as participants can see each other. We began accepting video conferencing as an alternative in applying this standard several years ago.

Given the growing availability of video conferencing platforms, this has become a much more viable way to help keep board members engaged when they are otherwise unable to travel.

Video of the Week

As part of our Building Trust Video Series, we are pleased to provide a video featuring Glen Mangold, a board member for Gift of Adoption Fund (a BBB Accredited Charity), which provides grants for qualified parents to assist in their adoption costs.

Recent Reports

We are always working with charities to publish or update reports for donors. Visit Give.org or local BBBs to check out any charity before giving. Our recently evaluated charities include:

• Alaska Conservation Foundation
• ALS Association
• Association on American Indian Affairs

Finally, remember to let us know by going to give.org/charity-inquiry  if you are interested in seeing a report on a charity not on the list and we will do our best to produce one.

H. Art Taylor, President & CEO
BBB Wise Giving Alliance