You have a charity in mind, or one has found you. Before you give, spend ten minutes on these five questions, in this order. Stop early if the answer to any of them is bad.
1. What outcome does a dollar buy? (2 minutes)
Go to the charity’s site and find its statement of impact. You are looking for an outcome: a death averted, a child who finished school, a ton of carbon not emitted, a hen out of a cage. What you will usually find is an input or activity: meals served, nets shipped, workshops held, “communities reached.”
Activities are not nothing, but they do not tell you whether anything changed. A charity that only reports activities either has not measured outcomes or does not want to share them. Either way, you cannot compare it with anything.
Good sign: a number with a unit you care about and an explanation of how it was calculated. Bad sign: “$1 saves a life.” Real cost-per-outcome figures for the best programs in the world are in the thousands of dollars. Why.
2. Has anyone independent looked at it? (2 minutes)
Search the charity’s name together with each of these: GiveWell, Founders Pledge, Giving Green, Animal Charity Evaluators, Happier Lives Institute. These evaluators publish their reasoning and their spreadsheets. A review, positive or negative, is worth more than any rating badge.
No hits does not mean the charity is bad; most charities are too small or too local to be reviewed. It does mean the burden shifts to question 1: the charity’s own evidence has to carry the weight.
Ratings sites (Charity Navigator, GuideStar/Candid) are useful for question 5 but say little about impact.
3. Is there evidence the program works, anywhere? (2 minutes)
Not evidence that this charity works, evidence that this kind of program works. Bed nets, cash transfers, deworming, vitamin A, cognitive behavioral therapy, corporate welfare campaigns: each has trials behind it. A charity running a well-evidenced program badly is still probably doing more good than a charity running an unevidenced program brilliantly.
Search the program type plus “randomized” or “systematic review.” If the charity is doing something novel with no evidence base, that is not disqualifying, but it moves your gift from “buying an outcome” to “funding an experiment,” and you should want to see how they plan to learn whether it worked.
4. Do they need your money? (2 minutes)
Look for a funding gap: a statement of how much more the program could use and what it would do with it. Evaluators publish these for their recommendations. Charities that say “we could expand to three more districts with $X” are doing the marginal analysis for you.
A charity with a large reserve, or one whose flagship program is fully funded by a big grantor, is not a bad organization. It is one where your next dollar does less than it would elsewhere. This is the question most donors skip and the one that most changes the answer. More on the marginal dollar.
5. Is it real and solvent? (2 minutes)
For a US charity, confirm it is a registered 501(c)(3) in the IRS Tax Exempt Organization Search, and find its most recent Form 990 (on the IRS site or Candid). You are checking three things only:
- It exists and is in good standing.
- Revenue and expenses are in the same order of magnitude; a charity spending far more than it raises is in trouble, one raising far more than it spends is banking your gift.
- Fundraising costs are not the majority of spending.
Do not use the overhead ratio for anything else. Why it is the wrong question.
If you only have one minute
Skip to question 2. If an evaluator you trust recommends the charity, the other four questions have been asked for you.
Method notes
This checklist is our own. It is designed for donors comparing programs on impact; it does not address tax treatment or personal connection, both of which are legitimate reasons to give that this site does not rank.
Sources
Figures come from the cited sources as of the dates shown. Cost-effectiveness estimates change as programs and evidence change; check the source before giving. We are not financial advisers and receive nothing from any charity named here.