GSI Structure & Activities
Our work is organised into four inter-related programme departments: GuideStar UK; GuideStar Development; GuideStar Alliance and Research & Reporting. A summary of each department can be found below. For information on GSI staff please go to the Staff page.
1. GuideStar Alliance
2. Emerging GuideStars
3. Partnerships and Development
4. Knowledge Team
5. Communicating GuideStar
6. GuideStar Technology Collaborative
7. GuideStar Data Services
GuideStar Alliance (GSA)
GSA is the association of full GuideStar members. Its purposes are to promote communication among the GuideStars; establish a venue for continuous improvement and participation by the national GuideStars in various global committees; and to preserve the value and integrity of the GuideStar brand and service internationally. A membership committee comprised of three founding members of the GSI board and representatives of existing GuideStars establishes the criteria for membership by new GuideStars, and determines whether applicant national programmes satisfy the criteria. GSA also serves the principal organiser of the Annual GuideStar International Assembly.
Emerging GuideStars
This programme initiates and supports the development of national GuideStars in countries around the world. In each country Emerging GuideStars works with leading national institutional partners to (1) establish the legitimate population of CSOs; (2) generate a continuous source of CSO-reported data; (3) cement productive relationships with the relevant government agencies, leading CSOs, academic institutions, corporations and professional firms; and (4) assemble the requisite legal, financial, human and governance resources to support a sustainable independent GuideStar service.
Partnerships and Development
The Partnerships and Development Programme seeks to establish, maintain, and derive enduring value from alliances with leading public and private global institutions. Relationships with partners, including private foundations, corporations and financial institutions, consulting firms and national development agencies and intergovernmental organisations, are critical to (1) generate support for GSI and national GuideStars, (2) help encourage national government and civil society leaders to collaborate with national projects and (3) promote utilisation of GuideStar services and acceptance of GSI’s Global Reporting Framework by these international institutions. Partnerships and Development is also specifically responsible for developing and maintaining the map of the GuideStar-readiness of countries.
Knowledge Team
GSI’s “knowledge development” efforts are pursued within the discrete programmes. For example, the Partnerships and Development Programme maps the GuideStar-readiness of countries; Communicating GuideStar assesses and accumulates evidence about the value to society of GuideStar services world-wide; and Enterprise Services promotes excellent and broadly useful CSO reporting through the evolution of GSI’s Global Reporting Framework (GRF.) The Knowledge Team is a hybrid process that convenes the staff persons from the pertinent programmes to ensure that they exchange ideas and collaborate. Collectively the team members deliberate two overarching corporate intellectual challenges —how to convince and enable people, private institutions, policy-makers, CSOs and others to use information to take effective action for society and how to convince and enable CSOs to become more effective and faithful reporters of their work, objectives, performance and needs.
Communicating GuideStar
Communicating GuideStar works with each GSI programme to promote the value of its work through websites, online newsletters, coordinated national websites messages, speeches and panel presentations by managers and board members, press releases and professional marketing materials. It also promotes the overarching corporate agenda of using information to enable social action, proactive and informed philanthropy, and excellence in CSO reporting. An integral part of the Knowledge Team, Communicating GuideStar has specific responsibility to track, assess and communicate the value to society of GuideStar services throughout the world.
GuideStar Technology Collaborative
GSI provides its national GuideStar clients with a CTP, which provides top notch operating environment, involves no upfront expenditure or development risk and gives the new GuideStar the ability to launch its service within a matter of weeks of assembling pertinent data. The CTP development process requires the ongoing collaboration of its national constituents with an objective of promoting the best ideas globally and providing a state of the art service nationally at nominal ongoing expense.
Enterprise Services
Enterprise Services provides the administrative foundation for all of the programmes of GuideStar International. Within Enterprise Services we find financial management and control, programmatic reporting (internal and external), intellectual property preservation, contract administration, corporate records management and human resources services for GSI, financial control for GuideStar Data Services, CIC, GSI’s wholly owned trading subsidiary, and the GuideStar Global Reporting Framework improvement process.
GuideStar Data Services (GSDS)
GuideStar Data Services (GDS) This is a UK registered Community Interest Company Community Interest Company wholly owned by GSI and governed by a board of directors elected by the trustees of GSI. GSDS generates revenue to support GSI’s charitable work and advances the usefulness of CSO information through the development and sale of online information utilities to government entities, corporations, research institutions, grantmakers, media and professional firms. While not a formal programme of GSI, its success is important to the achievement of GSI’s GuideStar UK programme as well as to the financial sustainability of the entire GSI enterprise.