JEDDAH: A study by the King Khaled Charity Foundation involving 165 charities found that 96 percent of charitable foundations in the country “have no clear message,” 63 percent of them have no strategic plans and their programs and projects are not based on sustainable development. The study also showed that services provided to women at 73 percent of these foundations are still “traditional and typical”. The nine-month study stated that the non-profit sector in the country needs to concentrate its efforts, develop its abilities, implement the role of public relations and work on administrative and organizational development, strategic planning, proper management of projects, while building partnerships and paying attention to information technology. The study showed that 73 percent of the foundations are “weak” in public relations and marketing, and the great majority of them, 92 percent, lack sufficient financial resources due to the lack of a clear institutional structure for raising donations, which is acknowledged by most of the organizations. Although many of these foundations believe they have clear messages with clear goals, the messages were found to be “unspecified, unrealistic, and not confined to a timetable,” the study stated, noting that non-profit organizations in the field of health care have more specific goals. Foundations were found to be concentrating on the poor and orphans, with less focus on young men and women. The main reason for many segments of society not benefiting from charities is that 35 percent of non-profit foundations have concentrated half or more of their efforts on one or two groups of people, the study stated.
