New Way To Rate Charities Sought

In some cases, the harm done by a well-intentioned program can be immediate and unmistakable. Consider the case of the Latin American Youth Center in Northwest Washington, which decided two years ago to include separate discussions of domestic violence for men and women in a parenting class.

"For the males, we were teaching them that violence is not an expression of love or machismo and that it's not okay to do it to your partners, which is obviously an important message," said Isaac Castillo, director of learning and evaluation for the center.

When the course was over, however, Castillo analyzed its effect, as the staff does for every new program, and saw frightening results. Men in the program were more likely to believe that occasional violence was acceptable; women were more likely to feel that they could not leave an abusive partner. There were no reports of increased violence, but the results led to an overhaul of the program.

Castillo and members of the Working Group said the biggest problem is that many charities do not have systems to assess whether a program is yielding positive or negative results.

The rating tool is designed to measure a charity's data management capabilities as well as whether the organization is achieving its goals.

Ultimately, members of the working group hope that Charity Navigator or another independent group will analyze charities using the new rating tool and make results public through the Web. Information on which charities are underperforming, combined with the economic slump, is likely to result in the demise of many of those groups, members acknowledge -- and some say that's not a bad thing.

"America is still incredibly generous, but I see a saturated market with 2 million efforts all over the map," Egger said. "The question is, how do we get to a point where we're using all our assets with ingenuity and real purpose?"