(BLOG) New Guide To 30,000 Nonprofits In Israel

"A slice of coffee cake to The Chronicle of Philanthropy for the heads-up about GuideStar Israel, a new Web site that provides information on 30,000 nonprofits in Israel. It’s available at http://www.guidestar.org.il/default.aspx?c=1&l=en (that is the English link; the site is also available in Hebrew and Arabic.) The site is in beta.



You can do an advanced search that covers language, activity, whether the organization is looking for volunteers or not, etc. You can also do a simple keyword search. A search for education found about 32 groups, with the information on the results page split about evenly between Hebrew and English. (Chrome picked up on the Hebrew and offered automatic translations, which is very handy for this site.)

Results include the name and brief description of the organization (usually in Hebrew, English, or both) and a series of icons that indicate the availability of additional information like URL, financial reports, etc. Each nonprofit gets its own pretty extensive page. Data available includes year founded, address, contact information, legal status, awards, and how you can help. Sometimes there’s an “Additional Languages” tab that provides information about the organization in something besides Hebrew. (I saw organizations with additional information in French as well as English.) If you’re a nonprofit in Israel you can get more information on adding entity information at http://www.guidestar.org.il/register.aspx.

I really liked how GuideStar Israel denoted which information was coming from the government and which information was coming from the nonprofit itself. That made it easier to assess what I was looking at. A lot of information here, but because not everything is available in English even on the English version of the site, I’m visiting it with Chrome for the autotranslation features, as I can’t read Hebrew." (source)