The Youth Center in Los Alamitos recently earned the Platinum GuideStar Nonprofit Profile Seal of Transparency, the highest level of recognition offered by GuideStar, the world’s largest source of nonprofit information. By sharing metrics that highlight changes of The Youth Center towards their mission, the organization is helping donors move beyond simplistic ways of nonprofit evaluation like its overhead ratios.
The Youth Center in Los Alamitos recently earned the Platinum GuideStar Nonprofit Profile Seal of Transparency, the highest level of recognition offered by GuideStar, the world’s largest source of nonprofit information. By sharing metrics that highlight changes of The Youth Center towards their mission, the organization is helping donors move beyond simplistic ways of nonprofit evaluation like its overhead ratios.
“It’s in accordance with our long-held belief in being transparent about our work,” said Youth Center Executive Director Lina Lumme. “We are excited to convey our results in a user-friendly and highly visual manner. By updating our GuideStar Nonprofit Profile to the Platinum level, we can now easily share a wealth of up-to-date organizational metrics with our supporters as well as GuideStar’s immense online audience, which includes donors, grantmakers, our peers, and the media.”
To reach the Platinum level, The Youth Center added extensive information to its Nonprofit Profile on GuideStar including in-depth financial information, qualitative information about goals, strategies, and capabilities plus quantitative information about results and progress toward its mission. By taking the time to provide this information, The Youth Center has demonstrated its commitment to transparency and to giving donors and funders meaningful data to evaluate The Youth Center.
“I encourage you to visit our profile on GuideStar to see what we’re all about,” added Lumme.
“We’re thrilled that our GuideStar Platinum Nonprofit Profile and its associated benefits help us better communicate The Youth Center’s exciting initiatives at a global scale.”
Since 1952, The Youth Center has been committed to transforming the lives of families through social, recreational and educational programs and activities for the last 65 years in the local community and beyond.
The GuideStar database contains a profile for every tax-exempt nonprofit registered with the IRS. They encourages every nonprofit to claim and update its profile at no cost to the organization. Updating allows nonprofits to share a wealth of up-to-date information with the more than 7 million people who visit GuideStar to learn more about nonprofit organizations each year. Updating also allows nonprofits like The Youth Center to share information with the more than 180 philanthropic websites and applications that are powered by GuideStar data. To reach a given participation level, organizations need to complete GuideStar requirements for that participation level. These participation levels, acknowledged as symbols of transparency in the nonprofit sector, are displayed on all updated participants’ profiles in the GuideStar database.
To view The Youth Center’s participation levels with GuideStar, please visit online at www.guidestar.org. For more information about The Youth Center’s programs and activities, please visit their website at www.theyouthcenter.org.
This article appeared in the June 28, 2017 print edition of the News Enterprise.