Evaluate Your Charity

Trends in Philanthropy

If you’re searching for a new charitable direction in which to spread your dough but you’re not quite sure where to turn, let the Web be your guide. Online nonprofit organization Charity Navigator, founded in 2001 by New York philanthropists John and Marion Dugan, allows givers to research charities evaluated based on financial health, organizational efficiency and organizational capacity, and rates charities up to four stars, stating that the charity “exceeds industry standards and outperforms most charities in its cause.”

According to the organization’s Web site, Charity Navigator’s mission is to guide intelligent giving: “We help charitable givers make intelligent giving decisions by providing information on over 5,000 charities and by evaluating the financial health of each of these charities. We ensure our evaluations are widely used by making them easy to understand and freely available to the public. By guiding intelligent giving, we aim to advance a more efficient and responsive philanthropic marketplace, in which givers and the charities they support work in tandem to overcome our nation's most persistent challenges.”

For more information, visit www.charitynavigator.org.