So you’ve decided to donate money or your time. How can you know that the organization you’ve chosen is a good one?

One method which should form part of your decision is the Charity Navigator, an independent site which reviews non-profit organazations.

Here you can search for a charity or check out the list of 1200 four-star charities. Charity Navigator provides financial information in different areas: revenue, expenses, assets, percentage of budget spent on fundraising, CEO salary, and an overall “score” out of 100 as well as an overall rating in number of stars. Sometimes different charities have different categories of information available.

Keep in mind that the absence of a charity doesn’t imply anything bad; Charity Navigator rates certain kinds of organizations only:

501 (c) (3) organizations which are based in the US and registered with the IRS – and as many religious organizations are exempt from filing a certain form (the Forms 990), Charity Navigator lacks sufficient information on their “financial health” to rate them. Charity Navigator also waits to see four years of Forms 990 before it rates a charity, and requires public support to be over $500,000 in the most recent fiscal year. Also excluded for reasons of comparison difficulty are private foundations, as are hospital and university programs for the time being. This is a lot of information; in short, it’s worth repeating: do not read anything necessarily negative into the lack of a review here. Use this site to compare.

A couple of neat things you can use this site to find out:

• which well-known charities spend more than 70% of their money to pay for-profit fundraisers,
• the ratings of several celebrity-related charities,
• which charity has a CEO making $677,000 a year but still a low rating,
• and finally, which six questions to ask before donating money.

Charity Navigator is one to be bookmarked!