Monday, April 20, 2009

Informed Giving

Since I've started actively seeking out charities to donate to, instead of waiting to receive requests, I've come in contact with a lot of different charities. Sometimes it's hard to decide where to allocate my donations, but I've found a website that helps! Charity Navigator does a lot of research for you so that you can be an informed donor. Ever wonder how much an organization spends on program or administrative expenses? Ever wonder how much they pay their CEO? Ever wonder how efficient they are in their fundraising? This website helps answer these questions, and rates the charities on their organizational efficiency and their organizational capacity. It also has some very interesting top ten lists (check this one out)! Whether you have one dollar or a million dollars to give, wouldn't you like to feel confident that it went to good use?

1 comment:

Jo Mama said...

I got a donation request in the mail from my neighbor the other day. It was from a cancer charity I had never heard of, so I read all the fine print on the request, including a bunch of tiny text on the back. There I learned that the charity spends something like 54 cents of every dollar on mission programs. Yikes. That is not good enough for me. If I am giving you a donation, I want to know more than 'about half' of it will actually go to the cause. I get that charities have expenses (I work for one, so I DEFINITELY get that), but come on people, we have to do better than 54 cents. Needless to say, I chose not to donate to that charity.

Charity Navigator is a great resource. Guidestar can help too.