Civil engineer, journalist and ebusiness entrepreneur Peter Heywood has been the main benefactor of the independent donor-advisory web site Intelligent Giving from its foundation in 2006 to its absorption this year by New Philanthropy Capital, which has promised to preserve its work.

The site collated assessments of more than 500 UK charities, giving them marks for the quality of reporting and transparency of their annual report and accounts. It also ran into occasional controversy for its criticism - often contested - of various charities, from Children in Need to a range of Jewish causes.

Intelligent Giving describes its mission as “to make giving more effective - by helping donors evaluate charities, by enabling donors to give more effectively, and by encouraging charities to become more effective”.

Heywood was a civil engineer for 10 years before becoming a journalist and working in trade publishing for two decades. In 1999, he co-founded lightreading.com, which describes itself as "the world’s leading publishing, events, and and research company targeting communications service providers". He sold LightReading in 2005.

Writing his will prompted Heywood to consider setting up a charity evaluation service. He wanted to give a percentage of his assets to charity but discovered it was not easy to discover which causes most deserved the charity gift and pledged himself to set up a web site to offer this service.