How to Evaluate a Nonprofit Before You Give

Donors are often told to check a nonprofit's overhead ratio and stop there. It is an easy number to find and a poor measure of quality. Organizations that underinvest in staff, accounting and evaluation tend to be less effective, not more.

Here is a more useful sequence.

1. Confirm status and identity

Start with the IRS Tax Exempt Organization Search. Confirm the legal name, the EIN and that the organization is currently eligible to receive tax-deductible contributions. Check the address and website match what you were shown.

2. Read the Form 990

Most tax-exempt organizations file an annual Form 990, and it is a public document. You do not need to read all of it. Look at:

• Program descriptions in Part III — do they describe specific activities or only slogans?
• Revenue sources — is the organization dependent on one grant that could disappear?
• Governance questions in Part VI — an independent board and a conflict-of-interest policy matter.

3. Look for evidence of results

Strong organizations describe what they did, for how many people, and what they learned. Weak ones describe intentions. Be cautious about impact statistics with no method behind them, and about "cost per life changed" figures that cannot be traced to anything.

4. Check who is closest to the work

Ask whether the people affected have a role in decisions — on the board, on staff, or through community partners. Organizations rooted in the communities they serve tend to have better information and lower coordination costs.

5. Weigh capacity, not just cause

A cause you care about is the starting point. Whether a specific organization can absorb and use another gift is a separate question. Small organizations can be transformed by modest sums; large ones can deploy far more but may not need your gift to be restricted.

6. Then consider how you give

Multi-year, unrestricted support is generally more useful than one-time restricted support, because it lets an organization plan, hire and keep people. If you cannot give multi-year, giving on the same date each year still helps.

Directory listings on this site

The nonprofit profiles here draw on public registration and filing data. A listing is a starting point for your own review, not an endorsement, and details can change between filings.

Where to go next

Put the checklist to work in the nonprofit directory, where you can filter by cause and location, or start from a cause page and see which organizations and Global Funds are active in it. For flexible support that lets strong organizations plan, see Why Unrestricted Giving Often Helps Nonprofits Most.