Hi All,
I just wanted to share an example of Charity Navigator's problem in evaluating charities by their numbers. Riverkeeper.org is an advogacy organization for NY water and they received a 1 star rating from Charity Navigator. Their response to that rating is here. They also link to an interesting NY Times article about Charity Navigator.
Riverkeeper states that the economic problems were the cause of their financial problems, but they have still been carrying out their mission of clean water advocacy. This is a good example of how a charity can look financially ineffective, but is effective in its programming and services.
I see that Charity Navigator also compares organizations who have similar missions.
Do you guys think comparing similar organizations is fair? I know the government does this and it is fairly standard practice, but local economy, past performance, operating budgets, and other circumstances might make this an unfair practice.
I would say that it is an unfair practice to compare organizations with similar missions, at least on a site like Charity Navigator. The site aims to provide information that donors need to choose wisely, and I think that simply listing organizations and their scores without a written comparison of the similarities and differences in the organizations is misleading.
ReplyDeleteThe New York Times article describes how Charity Navigator is working to make improvements, and to show a more complete picture of organizations' effectiveness. I think providing more written content and analysis, along with the statistics that are currently on the site pages, would give potential donors a much better understanding of what is actually going on within the organization. Of course, doing this for every organization would be much more time-consuming.
Oh, I also noticed that the executive director of Riverkeeper made $174,942 in 2009. I know that this is somewhat common in organizations, but as a potential donor, it would make me nervous-- especially since it's 5% of the organization's expenses. Again, there isn't a historical view of the organization's top salaries, which would be helpful in understanding whether an organization is overcompensating its top officials.
ReplyDeleteHayley, thanks for your response! I'm gong to have to agree with you there.
ReplyDeleteAs an interesting note, the director of Great River Greening in MN gets 7.46% of the expenses (granted her salary is a lot less at $82,842) and that organization has a higher rating than Riverkeeper!
Did anyone notice the reference in the NY Times article to the grant Charity Navigator received to enlist university students to contribute data to its site? That's our project! Charity Navigator has been concerned with the limits of financial data and our project is part of its solution!
ReplyDelete