Philanthropedia’s mission is to compile meaningful knowledge from experts about some of the most impactful nonprofits in different social causes and share this knowledge with donors and the nonprofit community in an influential way. Our theory of change is that by sharing these expert recommendations, Philanthropedia will help donors direct more money to top-performing nonprofits. Furthermore, by consolidating expert opinion about the strengths and weaknesses of different charities, Philanthropedia will encourage members of the nonprofit community to engage in a discourse about best practices. As a result of increased strategic giving and an open dialog, the pace and effectiveness of positive social change will increase.

We chose to research Education and Climate Change because excluding donations to religious institutions and education alma maters, they were at the top of the list of recipients of highest number of annual donations, which indicates that people care about these causes. We chose Bay Area Homelessness and Microfinance because they were issues that were popular but also because we wanted to run our methodology at the local and international level. In essence our choice for social causes aligns with our strife to provide useful information to as many people as possible. If you have a social cause you really care about and would like us to expand into it, we will be more than happy to hear from you! Contact us at feedback@myphilanthropedia.org.

We believe that evaluating nonprofit effectiveness is very challenging. However, there are professionals who are well-suited to assess nonprofit impact. Experts, such as foundation professionals, academics, and nonprofit executives have access to unique and non-public data about nonprofit performance. In addition, these experts are best-suited to interpret these data through advanced models for nonprofit effectiveness. Therefore, we rely on experts to identify which organizations they think are strongest.

Our experts represent a broad range of professionals working in a particular sector. We are interested in the perspectives of foundation professionals, academics, nonprofit executives and employees, researchers, journalists, politicians, and others. We aim to build an expert network with a balanced representation of professionals from all of these fields, with diverse geographical representation, and with diverse areas of expertise. We target experts in a social cause through a combination of cold emails and warm referrals (on the basis of professional and personal connections). We try to identify as many experts as possible to invite them to join the network. When experts fill out our survey, we collect information to confirm the strength and diversity of our expert network. We ask experts how many years they have been working in their field, what professional affiliations and/or academic background they have in the field, what their professional title is and who their employer is, and, we ask them to rank themselves on an expertise scale of 1-5 where 5 is “most” expert.

No, we don’t offer any compensation to experts who participate in our surveys.

We believe that there is no one metric or measure of nonprofit effectiveness. Therefore, we take a holistic approach to answer this question. Rather than tell the experts which criteria they should be considering when thinking about strong nonprofits, we ask our experts to identify what three criteria they use to judge nonprofit effectiveness. By gathering this information, we are able to capture the views of a variety of professionals and provide unique insight into the best way to evaluate nonprofits in a particular social sector.

First, we ask our experts to identify what criteria they use to judge nonprofit effectiveness. Then, we ask the experts to identify the top nonprofits in a social sector doing work at the national and start-up level. Experts may recommend up to five nonprofits at each of the two levels. Then, we consolidate the results to identify which nonprofits are most frequently identified (the top-15%). Next, we run a second survey in which we ask the experts to rate how effective each of the top-nonprofits is in relation to all nonprofits in the space. Additionally, we ask experts to comment on the strengths and areas for improvement for each of these nonprofits. We then publish the results on our website.

We believe nonprofit executives have an important perspective on nonprofit effectiveness and we value their insights. However, we do not allow any expert (nonprofit executive or others) to mention their own organization and we double check every survey response to ensure that there is no “self-voting.”

By running a second survey, we are able to confirm that the top-15% of nonprofits identified in the first survey are really some of the strongest in the field. Additionally, we are able to collect more information about the top-nonprofits which adds important additional information about why these nonprofits are truly among the strongest and in what ways they could improve.

We believe that nonprofit effectiveness is very hard to measure. Today, some organizations use quantitative metrics such as overhead ratios or fundraising efficiency ratios which can be collected for a large wide variety of nonprofits relatively easily and inexpensively. Some other organizations conduct detailed research and produce in-depth reports on a few select organizations. This method is expensive and quite time consuming. We believe in a holistic approach to measuring nonprofit effectiveness which is why we use experts as a proxy to identify some of the strongest nonprofits. This model is scalable, produces unique and useful information, and is relatively inexpensive. We believe that experts (such as foundation professionals, academics, nonprofit executives, and others) have access to unique and nonpublic data and because they have been working in the sector for a long time, they also have refined mental models for pulling these data together and making determinations about nonprofit effectiveness. Further, we don’t believe just one expert or one opinion is more valuable than another, therefore, we try to build expert networks that represent a variety of different backgrounds within the field: professional, academic, geographic, etc.

We realize that the list we present represents only a moment in time. Therefore, we intend to re-run our survey every 1-2 years to keep the lists as up-to-date as possible.

While we feel confident that the organizations our experts identify are among the strongest out there, we know that our list is not exhaustive. We are interested in highlighting some of the strongest nonprofits in different sectors and do not feel qualified to rate one more highly than another. There are many outstanding nonprofits in operation, some of which we have captured on our website.

A Donation Portfolio allows you to manage your online giving. You can donate to organizations, review past donations, print tax receipts, and visualize how you’ve allocated your support across multiple organizations. In addition, you can export your Donation Portfolio Badge to external websites so you can share what you care about with others. Others can then view the organizations you care about and “replicate” or follow the contributions you’ve made.

An Expert Mutual Fund is similar to a Donation Portfolio except that it refers to the expert recommended allocations across an entire social cause. For example, we asked our Climate Change experts to allocate 100 monetary points across the 15 Climate Change top-nonprofits. The result is a Climate Change Expert Mutual Fund which individuals can donate to as a unit. If you donate $500 to the Climate Change Expert Mutual Fund then your money will be divided across the Climate Change top-nonprofits according to the expert recommended allocations.

We plan to build this feature in the future. We want you to be able to manage all of your donations through one central place online to make it easier to keep track of your annual giving.

Currently, we are funded by a grant from the Hewlett Foundation. Additionally, we hope that the information we provide on our website is valuable to individual donors, therefore, we ask users to consider making a small (optional) donation to Philanthropedia when they make a donation to top-nonprofits through our website. We are exploring other partnerships and business models to make our nonprofit sustainable.

No, Philanthropedia does not keep any part of your donation for operating costs. PayPal charges a mandatory 2.9% credit card fee which is subtracted from your donation. Therefore, 97.1% of your donation goes to the organizations you choose. However, you have the option of making an additional donation to Philanthropedia to cover the 2.9% transaction fee and help support future Philanthropedia research and work. By contributing the optional additional donation, you will ensure that 100% of your donation goes directly to the organization(s) you are supporting.

At the end of each month, we collect all of the donations that have been allocated to each organization and processed by PayPal. We then write a check to each organization. If an organization’s monthly donations are fewer than $5, we will hold that money until a minimum of $5 has been reached. Then, at the end of that month, we will write a check to the organization.

If you believe you are an expert in a particular social cause and would like to participate in our work, we encourage you to contact us: feedback@myphilanthropedia.org. Please let us know your name and in what social cause area you have expertise. We will let you know when we are conducting research in your area. If you are an expert in an area we have already covered, please still reach out to us. We will add your name to our list and when we re-run the survey in a year or two, we will contact you.

Unfortunately, the list of nonprofits we highlight on our website is out of our control. We do not alter or change any of the responses of our experts and are representing their collective beliefs by highlighting the nonprofits they identify. In the future, we hope to identify 20-30 organizations per social cause.