Charity Metrics

 

With over 1.8 million non-profit organizations, knowing how to maximize impact with your donations is nearly impossible.

Charity Metrics seeks to address this issue by moving beyond administrative expense ratios as the primary measuring stick of performance. Donors need operational data to understand how successful an organization is on both an absolute and relative basis.

Examples
A food bank may spend over 90% of revenue on program expenses, but could rank poorly in terms of cost per pound of food distributed.

A local museum could have a high administrative expense ratio, but serve a large number of visitors, resulting in a low cost per visit.

Evaluating non-profits on administrative expense ratios rather than operational data is also problematic because (1) it discourages investment in top tier talent and systems, (2) it can be subject to accounting gimmickry and manipulation, and (3) it penalizes providers with administratively intensive missions.

To date, Charity Metrics has ranked 74 organizations with annual revenues of $2.3 billion in 12 categories.