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Mar 21, 2024
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As the only independent charity watchdog in the United States, CharityWatch relies on your support to fund our in-depth research and analysis to bring you the independent charity ratings you rely on to make more informed and intelligent giving decisions.
We invite you to sign into your PayPal account and donate to CharityWatch today. You can also select CharityWatch as your “favorite charity!”
Donations from supporters like you fund our work:
· In 2023 and 2024 CharityWatch provided training sessions and other assistance to journalism students at Stanford, the University of Toronto, and the University of Maryland for charity-related reporting. The world has changed with respect to how the public consumes information, and journalism plays a more critical role than ever. It’s easy to find ubiquitous amounts of information on any topic—the independence and reliability of that information is what is at issue and what CharityWatch exists to address in the nonprofit space.
· This month CharityWatch published a series of articles on the work some of our Top-Rated charities are doing in Haiti, a country currently experiencing extreme political instability and violence. We also published an article and YouTube video on the FEED Foundation, a legitimate charity whose identity has been appropriated by scammers who are spamming the public with relentless robocalls.
· CharityWatch has continued to report on the problem of nonprofit trade associations publishing ratings on hundreds of thousands of charities based on automation and crowdsourcing. Such ratings lack both rigor and independence, and may produce results that can cause donors to make bad giving decisions. We have assigned failing grades to many organizations that receive perfect scores on these sites.
In the other direction, we recently reported about Intrepid
Fallen Heroes Fund—arguably one of the most financially efficient and
impactful nonprofits in the country. It unfairly received one out of four stars
on Charity Navigator’s website because it capitalizes its costs of construction
rather than expensing them in the year such outlays are made (in compliance
with accounting rules). Charity Navigator’s simplistic formula for computing a
charity’s program % did not incorporate an understanding of accounting rules,
and Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund was unfairly punished in
its rating system for this reason.
After CharityWatch published our article, Charity
Navigator subsequently updated its rating of the charity. However, our concerns
remain that other charities may similarly be punished under this trade
association’s simplistic rating system. CharityWatch works as hard as we can
within our limited resources to provide a check against the practices of
organizations that host such online rating databases.
Over the past several months CharityWatch has added new ratings for, and/or reported on the following
organizations:
American
Friends of Magen David Adom
Palestine
Children’s Relief Fund
As the only independent charity watchdog in the United States, CharityWatch works hard to provide you and others the vital public service of protecting the nation’s donors from predatory and exploitative fundraisers and other bad actors within the nonprofit sector.
CharityWatch is not funded by industry insiders, which is why we have the freedom to speak openly, call out wrongdoing at charities, and assign failing grades to nonprofits when they are deserved without concern for special interests cutting our funding. CharityWatch relies on public support to maintain our independence, which is essential for any watchdog or consumer protection organization.
Just as lobbyists are not equivalent to investigative journalists, charity trade associations are not watchdogs looking out for your best interests as a donor. In other words, not all charity ratings are the same.
Thank you for supporting CharityWatch and for giving wisely!