Why Ranking Charities Is So Tricky

While many donors rely on rankings of charities to decide where to give, many of the evaluation efforts conducted by watchdog groups miss a big angle — whether a charity is successful in accomplishing its mission, reports The Wall Street Journal.

What’s more, many of the systems are set up in a way that encourages charities to manipulate them, especially as they seek to demonstrate that they spend little on fund raising and other overhead and put money into charitable programs.

Carl Bialik, the reporter of the Journal article, also blogs about his column topic here and offers additional resources.

See this recent Chronicle article, Making a Measurable Difference, on a new evaluation effort.