Where to get information about charities

In addition to charities’ own websites and annual reports, you might find the following groups that evaluate charities helpful. A charity ranking is, however, only as good as the information and thinking it is based on, so I treat any such rankings with caution.

Good information and thinking are difficult and expensive to come by, especially if you are trying to evaluate thousands of organizations with widely disparate goals. The more established charity evaluators therefore rely exclusively on financial metrics, which can be standardized and plugged into formulas. This approach can be extremely useful for identifying scams, but it says little about which organizations are most effective at actually helping people.

Some of the newer websites take a social media approach and collate personal comments and recommendations, but they are, I believe, not nearly comprehensive enough to be reliable.

I therefore consider the following websites tools, not final authorities. I hope the descriptions will help you evaluate how each site is and is not useful for your purposes.

GiveWell is currently my favorite resource. As far as I know, it is the only major organization that attempts to evaluate not just charities’ financial metrics but also how well their programs achieve their goals. It began with a group of people in the financial industry who wanted to give money where it would make a difference, but found that making informed decisions is not a part-time job. They now have five full-time staff who use academic studies, information from charities, etc., to identify organizations and programs that work well, by which they mean proven, cost-effective, transparent, and scalable – i.e., could put additional funding to good use.

Their website is full of information not just about specific organizations, but also different charitable arenas (health, economic empowerment, disaster relief, equality of opportunity in the U.S., etc.) and where they believe giving has the most impact. I consider their approach extremely useful in the areas where my values and priorities match theirs, which is most of them. They necessarily make judgment calls, usually good judgment calls in my opinion, but not always the same ones I’d make. They do not, for example, include any information on organizations doing work related to the environment, which I also consider a priority. They are supported by a small group of committed major donors.

Charity Navigator uses information provided on Form 990, an informational tax form that nonprofit organizations are expected to file with the IRS annually, to rate charities based on their financial efficiency and their financial ability to support and expand their programs. Results for more than 5500 charities are available online. It nominally compares each charity with others doing similar work, but I have often found its groupings of “similar” work too broad to be useful. I consider a 4 star rating a good sign and a 1 or 2 star rating a stay-away warning, but 3 stars may, I believe, simply mean that some goals are harder to accomplish than others. Their website includes lots of other information relevant to giving – from top 10 (and bottom 10) lists in various areas, to tips on how to be a savvy donor. They are supported by user donations.

Charity Watch uses the Form 990, annual reports, and audited financial statements (when charities are willing to share them) to grade charities based on the amount of their income they spend on programs versus fundraising and other financial metrics. They focus on big charities receiving more than $1 million a year and evaluate more than 500 charities annually. An online list of rated charities indicates which groups cooperated fully with their request for information, but the results of their analyses are available in a paper booklet, not online. A initial sample booklet is $3, and annual membership is $40. Charity Watch was one of the first groups to raise a red flag about Greg Mortenson’s Central Asia Institute, which raises my respect for them. They are supported by membership fees and donations.

GuideStar encourages charities to provide information about themselves, adds information from public records, and encourages people with personal experience of a charity, good or bad, to post comments about it. It claims to have some amount of information about 1.8 million nonprofit organizations, but of course the volume and quality of that information varies widely. Much of the GuideStar website is oriented towards professionals in the nonprofit world, but its information can be useful for individual donors too. They are supported by donations and by the services they sell.

Great Nonprofits encourages people to post reviews and ratings of organizations with which they have personal experience – as employees, volunteers, recipients, and donors – and aims to be the “Zagat” of the nonprofit world. The results are as variable in reliability and abundance as any crowd-sourced webpage, but some of the stories are worth browsing. They are supported by donations.