АҚШ қайырымдылық ұйымдарын бағалаушы Charity Navigator

Charity assessment organization that evaluates charitable organizations in the U. S.

Charity Navigator is a charity assessment organization that evaluates hundreds of thousands of charitable organizations based in the United States, operating as a free 501(c)(3) organization. It provides insights into a nonprofit's financial stability, adherence to best practices for both accountability and transparency, and results reporting. It does not accept any advertising or donations from the organizations it evaluates.

Charity Navigator was launched in spring 2001 by John P. (Pat) Dugan, a pharmaceutical executive and philanthropist. The group's mission was to help "donors make informed giving decisions and enabling well run charities to demonstrate their commitment to proper stewardship" of donor dollars. Over the years, the group grew from 1,100 to over 200,000 charities. As of 2009, four percent of the charities it evaluated had earned at least five consecutive 4 star ratings. In 2011, Kiplinger's Personal Finance selected Charity Navigator as a Money Management Innovation for "helping millions of people become philanthropists", and it was on Time magazine's top 50 websites of 2006 list. In a 2014 Chronicle of Philanthropy interview on the nonprofit sector, journalist Nicholas Kristof identified it with a trend he deplored: "There is too much emphasis on inputs and not enough on impact", Kristof said. "This has been worsened by an effort to create more accountability through sites like Charity Navigator. There is so much emphasis now on expense ratios that there is an underinvestment in administration and efficiency." A 2014 survey of attitudes toward charity evaluation indicated positive results for Charity Navigator in six of seven categories. In October 2020, Charity Navigator acquired impact based charity evaluator ImpactMatters. In August 2023, Charity Navigator acquired Causeway, a philanthropy technology startup.

Using publicly available tax returns (IRS Form 990) filed with the Internal Revenue Service and information posted by charities on their web sites, the Charity Navigator rating system bases its evaluations in two broad areas—financial health and accountability/transparency. Based on these criteria charities are awarded one to four stars.

In the early years, the group's methodology was the subject of some criticism for its approach at the time. This method was criticized in a 2005 article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review for (at the time) taking into account only a single year's IRS Form 990. This approach can lead to significant fluctuation in the ranking of a charity from year to year.

Some charities, in response, began to supply more information. The New York Times reported in 2010 that one non profit began "reporting on its finances using the same format as the 10 K." the cofounder of the Centre for Effective Altruism wrote "What Charity Navigator Gets Wrong About Effective Altruism".