Good HQ was a feedback platform for charities and good causes in Scotland.

We built it to do three things:

• To help charities and good causes gather feedback about what they’re doing well and how they could improve
• To empower people who want to share their experiences with charities and good causes for the benefit of others
• To make it easier for people who want to get involved to find out what’s happening and what people are saying

For more information on its origins, take a look at a blog post written for Big Lottery Scotland about the uses of Good HQ and browse the blog posts written by Good HQ Community Manager, Lauren Pluss, on the SCVO blog.

While we had around 400 organisations sign up and thousands of reviews, we learned:

• It required significant encouragement to get people to publicly review charities, and when they did, it was overwhelmingly positive
• While the majority of reviews being positive is to be expected, having all 5 star ratings meant the site didn’t generate constructive comments to help charities improve
• Reviews may be better when collected as part of a particular service or experience (e.g. volunteering or fundraising)
• Organisations primarily used the site to share updates and stories of the work they were doing, highlighting the desire to reach a new audience
• Directories require a lot of resources to maintain and it is challenging to get busy organisations to commit to updating information, even with easy self-service routes and reminders

We have taken the learning from Good HQ and adapted technology into other digital services we have developed, including Goodmoves, the Saltire Awards and Volunteer Scotland search.