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Tuesday, November 27 is the international day of giving. But where to give? At Charity Intelligence, we believe donors should do a little research before giving. And we have a few ideas of where to look:
2018-top-picks
charity-profiles/top-10-impact-charities-of-2018 2018 Top Impact Charities
 
 
top-100-rated-charities
charity-profiles/top-100-rated-charities 100 Top-Rated Charities
 
 
four-star-charities
four-star-charities 4-Star Charities
 
Giving Tuesday began in 2012. This is its 7th year. Giving Tuesday is the kick-off to the final 35 days of the Giving Season. The Giving Season is as important to charities as Christmas shopping is to stores. It’s not uncommon for charities to receive 40%-50% of their annual donations in December.
Giving Tuesday will be about Instagram and hashtags, but we hope Giving Tuesday is more. Let’s make Giving Tuesday a day to reflect on our giving and the change each of us hopes to see in the world.
Key trends in giving: A fundamental shift in donors being more informed and looking into charities.

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 I’ve just had another person send me a link to the Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR) article by Mary Kay Gugerty & Dean Karlan titled https://ssir.org/articles/entry/ten_reasons_not_to_measure_impact_and_what_to_do_instead Ten Reasons Not to Measure Impact – and What to Do Instead. I thoroughly enjoyed the article, but as the comments below it state, the title is misleading. Had it, instead, been called Ten Reasons Many Organizations Should Not do Strict Randomized Controlled Studies, I would have no issue with anything in the article at all. But as it is, I hate the title.
Full-blown impact studies using controls can take months and many, many thousands of dollars. I believe that it would be wasteful for most charities in Canada to undertake such studies. As the article points out, money spent on research that doesn’t help is money wasted.
The key difference between their title and the title of this article is the definition of “measuring impact”. If we were to use their wording, “collect good monitoring data that informs progress”, as the definition of measuring impact, then my title would have been more appropriate for their article. Each of their ten reasons has to do with what I believe are mostly wasteful, overblown studies that are not required in the vast majority of cases.
It is often said that Good is the enemy of Great. In the world of charity program evaluation and reporting, I would argue that Great is the enemy of Good. Charity leaders believe that to get great data, it would cost too much time and money that they don’t have, that they would rather spend on helping their clients.
However, the crux of it, to me, is that good data is exactly what will help clients the most. Those charities that we have found to have the most impact on their clients collect good data. It may not be randomized controlled data (almost never is, nor should it be) but it is good enough that they can understand what is happening because of their programs and what happens when they change things in an attempt to improve their programs. That’s the main reason to collect data – to continually improve program outcomes and to make sure that you are using donor dollars to create as much impact as possible.
It could be argued that we are simplifying things too much, that you cannot adequately understand the impact of a charity without some sort of strict control group evaluation. But I do not believe that, and I worry that this is one of the key reasons that charities are NOT collecting the right data. It is too intimidating to get Great data.
Good data would let you see how much you spend to help someone. And Good data would then allow you to compare that to what happens to that person. Do they improve their health? How much? Do they become employed? How much more money are they making? Are they housed in a better situation than they would have been in? Did you provide them food? How much? Answers to relatively simple questions will allow the charity to understand how much difference they are making with the dollars they spend and if changes in programs are improving the outcomes. And, as Kate Ruff and Sara Olsen argue in another SSIR article, https://ssir.org/articles/entry/next_frontier_in_social_impact_measurement The Next Frontier in Social Impact Measurement Isn’t Measurement at All, this data will also allow analysts to determine how much change the programs are creating.
We have analyzed over 200 charities, looking to determine if they are creating a lot of value with the money given to them, or if they are creating a little value. We are not splitting hairs, wondering if, for a $100 donation, the charity has produced $210 or $230 of value. That is immaterial, and it is not cost-effective to be able to understand that difference. But if you can compare two charity programs, A & B, where program A is creating between $150 and $250 worth of value per $100, and program B is creating between $300 and $400 worth of value, it’s an easy decision.
Most charities do not currently have the data to do this. Some are focused on hair-splitting, which can paralyze a charity, and most are just counting bodies. They could calculate that it cost them $1,345 to help each of their clients, but they have no idea about the associated value created by helping this client. Is it close to $1,300?  Could it be more – $2,000, perhaps?  Or are you really making change and it’s more like $5,000? With a bit of relatively inexpensive data on clients, most charities could provide data that would allow for such necessary calculations.
I applaud Gugerty & Karlan’s article, but I frown on their title. At least for those people who have, likely blindly, sent it on to me, it perpetuates the notion that there are so many reasons not to do impact evaluation that we may as well just forget it. We don’t need any more reasons not to measure impact.
Just my thoughts,
Greg
 
Greg Thomson
Ci Director of Research

Charities reaping billions of dollars each year from well-meaning Canadians aren’t legally bound to make public their full audited financial statements. But, surely, they have an ethical obligation to do so. Transparency should be paramount when capitalizing on other people’s generosity. 
As reported by the Star’s Raveena Aukahh and Amy Dempsey, these are some of the biggest players in the charitable sector, with the (Major 100) charities receiving $3.6 billion of the $9.7 billion donated each year. Yet several in this group didn’t want their full financial statements posted publicly. Getting that data required a special request to the Canada Revenue Agency.
What is there to hide? Well, fully one-quarter of the (Major 100) had so much money already in hand they could run their programs for three or more years with no additional fundraising at all. Yet they’re still asking for people’s money. Others continue to spend in excess of 40 per cent of their donations, or more, on fundraising instead of the cause they’re supposed to be serving.
As far as donors are concerned, that’s useful information. All charities should be required to post their full audited financial statements on line. It’s the best way to inspire public confidence in giving. ”
text-align: right; https://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/2011/11/16/charitable_sector_needs_transparency.html Toronto Star Editorial, November 16, 2011 
Update November 2018: Since 2011, 96 of Canada’s Major 100 charities post audited financial statements online. This is a significant improvement from 70 in 2011.
Charity Intelligence hopes all Canadian charities that receive donations over $1 million will be financially transparent with donors. We will continue to measure financial transparency for donors. 
February 22, 2016: Charities Directorate issues new guidance. For smaller charities, with income over $250,000, the https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/charities-giving/charities/operating-a-registered-charity/financial-statements.html Charities Directorate guidance is that audited financial statements be prepared.
 

Ci’s results for the year ending June 2018

 
 This is exactly the impact we hoped for. A 2016 Statistics Canada donor survey found that 30% of Canadian donors are not giving more to charities because they believed their money will not be used efficiently or effectively. With unanswered questions and uncertainty, we estimate about $2.7 billion in Canadian giving is “on the sidelines”. If we could address this donor uncertainty, bridge the information gaps, donor confidence would rise and money would flow …. And donations would flow to more cost-efficient and effective (impact) charities. From Google Analytics and StatsCan, we estimate Charity Intelligence informed $74.1 million in Canadian giving, with an operating cost of $195,000.
 in the summer of 2018 compared to the previous year, a steady but slower improvement in charity donor accountability than hoped for. Since 2013 when we began grading charity reports, charity accountability grades have improved 18%. Canadian charities still lag British and Australian charities by a wide margin by our estimates: average Canadian charities scored 95, British charities are estimated to be at 120 and Australian charities may be higher still. To be better informed, donors need Canadian charities to better report their results. This is going to be a long haul objective. 
Charity Intelligence is a small charity with donations of $244k in F2018. The largest cost is staff salaries to do charity research reports and impact analysis. Administrative costs are 9% of total revenues (allocation of rent, bookkeeping costs, and audit fees), and fundraising costs are 2% of total donations. For every dollar you donate, 89 cents goes to the cause. Charity Intelligence has funding reserves of $109k that cover 6 months of research. See Charity Intelligence’s https://www.charityintelligence.ca/about-ci/annual-reportsfinancials audited financial statements and review of https://www.charityintelligence.ca/charity-details/261-charity-intelligence Charity Intelligence.
Huge thanks to our amazing donors whose funding made these results possible.
Additional information about Charity Intelligence is posted in frequently https://www.charityintelligence.ca/about-ci/faqs asked questions.
 
 
 

text-align: right; September 18, 2018
Are you looking for a list of the best of the best charities? The following is a list of the Top 100 Charities as rated by Charity Intelligence. These charities are all 4-Star rated and have the highest point totals based on our https://charityintelligence.ca/ratings/rating-methodology rating methodology, excluding charities with an Impact rating of Fair or Low.
All of these charities are transparent, accountable to donors, have a need for funding, and are not wasteful when it comes to overhead costs. As well, 30 of these 100 charities have been rated for impact and have been found to be either Good or High impact charities. These are the charities donors can give to with confidence.