I often receive phone calls from prospective donors asking me questions about the Foundation, to help them determine if the Foundation is a good organization to receive their donor dollars. Since the Meso Foundation takes a lot of pride in our accountability and transparency, I wanted to share with everybody why the Foundation is a great recipient of your donations.
To start, you should know that the Mesothelioma Applied Research Foundation is a 501(c)3 organization. This means that the IRS has categorized us as a non-profit charity and that all gifts made to us are tax-deductible. Following the receipt of a gift of any size, we promptly generate a “thank-you” letter which also serves the donor as a tax receipt.
Giving to a non-profit organization should always be an informed decision. Learning about the organization’s work as well as its financial standing is a great step toward that. The Meso Foundation lists its Annual Reports on its website and you can download the most recent ones here. The Annual Report is generally a summary of the organization’s activity for a particular year, and it includes complete financial information about income and expenses.
The Mesothelioma Applied Research Foundation is a member of the National Health Council Standards of Excellence Certification Program. The National Health Council (NHC) has adopted a set of good operating practices to ensure that its patient advocacy group members (also known as voluntary health agencies) maintain the highest standards of organizational effectiveness and public stewardship. The standards cover the areas of governance, personnel policies, programs, fundraising, finance, accounting and reporting, and evaluation. These standards are completely aligned with, but more extensive than, the Standards for Charitable Accountability adopted by the Better Business Bureau’s Wise Giving Alliance (WGA).
The Meso Foundation has also been reviewed by independent charity evaluation organization and additional independent ratings and information are immediately available on the following organization’s websites:
www.guidestar.org – Guidestar gathers and publicizes information about nonprofit organizations. They encourage nonprofits to share information about their organizations openly and completely. They combine the information that nonprofits supply with data from several other sources.
www.charitynavigator.org -Charity Navigator has become the nation’s largest and most-utilized evaluator of charities. Their team of professional analysts has examined tens of thousands of non-profit financial documents. As a result, they know as much about the true fiscal operations of charities as anyone. Charity Navigator’s rating system examines two broad areas of a charity’s financial health — how responsibly it functions day to day as well as how well positioned it is to sustain its programs over time. Each charity is then awarded an overall rating, ranging from zero to four stars. The Mesothelioma Applied Research Foundation has been awarded four-stars by Charity Navigator. You can view our information on Charity Navigator here.
www.greatnonprofits.org – On GreatNonProfits.org much like Amazon book reviews or consumer reviews site (Epinions, Zagats, TripAdvisor, Yelp, etc.), the reviews and ratings are posted by people who have been touched by a nonprofit and want to share their story about it. You’ll see on our site stories of people who have volunteered for or donated to nonprofits and stories of people who have received services. You can read reviews about the Meso Foundation here.
I hope this was a helpful overview. If you should have any additional question, please don’t hesitate to call me. Thank you all for your attention.
Maja Belamaric Outreach Director Mesothelioma Applied Research Foundation (877) 363-6376 ext. 7272
