Where Should You Donate?

Siobhan Miller was at SMASHED's Glorious ManPageant, cheering on her brother, who had grown the facial hair and dressed the part of the stapler-obsessed Milton from "Office Space." She gave extra money at the pageant because she likes the cause. Miller pays attention to much of what the experts suggest: She prefers organizations that work in her community -- ones whose work she can see -- and she checks out their overhead.

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In the Washington area, donors can check out the Catalogue for Philanthropy, which evaluates and profiles 55 to 70 nonprofits each year. The catalogue has been published for the past five years by the Harman Family Foundation. For inclusion, organizations must be based in the area and have budgets of less than $2 million.

The charities apply to be featured and then are evaluated by people from area foundations, advocacy programs and government. They often already know about the charities they're reviewing, or about similar ones, so they have standards for comparison.

The evaluators look at the work the charities do, their cost effectiveness, their importance in their community and financial transparency. The Catalogue for Philanthropy checks the charities' status with the Internal Revenue Service and their financial situation. As a final step, an accountant looks into the charities' books.

The Internet also provides a wealth of information for donors wishing to check out a charity.

Thirty-eight percent of people who make a donation consult an online resource to learn more about the organization, according to a study by Virilion, formerly Mindshare Interactive Campaigns. Most are seeking information about how the charity spends its money; 47 percent of those people say that they're looking to find out what the charity accomplished last year.

GuideStar ( http://www.guidestar.org) collects the forms that charities file with the IRS, called Form 990. It publishes them on its site, along with basic information about the charity's mission, leadership and goals. GuideStar does not provide ratings or scores for charities.

Charity Navigator ( http://charitynavigator.org) goes further. It evaluates more than 5,000 of the largest charities, which account for 80 percent of giving in the United States, said Sandra Miniutti, Charity Navigator's vice president of marketing.

"We like to think of ourselves as the Consumer Reports of the nonprofit world," Miniutti said.

The site deals solely with the financial health of the nonprofits, based on the IRS Form 990s: how much of expenses are programs or services, and how revenue and expenses change over time. "Just like for-profit companies, expenses go up every year" for charities, Miniutti said. Charity Navigator wants to see that organizations are keeping up with inflation and have rainy-day funds.

"But beyond that, it's up to the donor to actually check out the charity," she said.

Charity Navigator was founded by a large donation from philanthropists and now solicits donations from foundations, corporations or individuals. Its reports are free.