– Ed Long, the Smarter Giving Guy.
I don’t believe a serious giver should give to a charity without looking at the key performance information in its latest IRS Form 990 or 990-EZ.
That’s where you’ll find the charity’s program spending numbers, find its key staff and their compensation, see how efficient it is in its fundraising, find its cash reserve situation and discover its top program focus. It’s all there, in the 990, along with much more!
And, charity 990s are available online, for free. They’re public information, that you have a right to. You just need to know how to find them.
I’ve spent hundreds of hours researching charities, and looking at their 990s. After a while I realized that even though a charity’s 990 was 20 or 30 pages (or longer), to screen charities I’d created a “road map” in my mind that quickly took me to the key information tucked away among all those pages. Key information that would quickly tell me whether I’d consider the charity for a donation — or would move on to another charity.
To help you be a smart giver and find that key charity information, I’ve put the “road map” down on paper in a new guide that shows how to quickly find a charity’s 990, and then how to quickly sort through it to find key performance information. I call it The Smarter Giving Guide To Finding Key Charity Information.
There are more than 900,000 public charities out there, asking for your donations. Many do terrific work and make careful use of the money donated to them — but many don’t.
The biggest charity ratings group is CharityNavigator.org. CharityNavigator screens about 5,400 charities (mostly larger, national groups). The next most prominent, the American Institute on Philanthropy, screens about 500. Together, they cover less than 1% of U.S. charities. For more than 99% of charities, you have to do your own screening.
The Smarter Giving Guide To Finding Key Charity Information is an easy-to-use charity screening guide that shows you how to quickly determine things like
- What part of a charity’s spending goes for programs, vs. fundraising and administration.
- Whether its work focuses on things you care about.
- Whether it truly needs your support or is “rolling in dough.”
- Whether its pay arrangements with staff, board and others are reasonable.
- How much it spends to raise a dollar.
Here’s a sample of things you can quickly determine about a charity using the Guide.
Being a smart giver also involves focusing your giving, setting your giving budgets, creating strong relationships, and learning about taxes and giving techniques. Check out the rest of this site for help with those.
I’m so confident in the value of the Guide that I’ll give you this money back guarantee: Follow the Guide and screen just one local charity’s Form 990 data and if you don’t believe you’ve found crucial information about the charity, then simply give us a call and we’ll cheerfully refund your entire purchase price.
Think there’s no need to screen before you donate, because charities are all pretty much the same? You’ll change your mind if you
- Look at the CharityNavigator.org ratings. A full third of the charities covered by CharityNavigator are what I call “clunkers” (getting 0, 1 or 2 stars, based on CharityNavigator’s 4-star system).
- Look at the Federal Trade Commission’s Operation False Charity — working to shut down fraud by groups that operate as “charities.”
What’s smarter? Giving $500 to clunkers, or buying and using the Guide and giving $475+ to top-notch charities?