Recommendations from the 21/64 Certified Advisors and NextGenDonors Networks:

1. Charity Navigator
   1. Charity Navigator looks at the financial metrics of about 9k nonprofits, beyond overhead.
   2. Charity Navigator is the nation’s largest and most-utilized evaluator of charities working to guide intelligent giving. Browse by cause or search by keyword to learn about an organization’s financial health, accountability, and transparency.
   3. Good start but not super informative.
2. Goodnation
   1. Goodnation is a great resource, although limited to the charities recommended by the foundations that share data with them. What is good, however, is that the selection of charities is evidence-based and Goodnation does their additional diligence. It’s quite user-friendly and has a good search tool. It also incorporates online surveys with some personal follow-up with a philanthropy advisor. It’s not a replacement for serious philanthropic advising, but complimentary
   2. Through a custom DAF offering, Goodnation vets high-performing organizations serving the communities you care about and then make it easy and rewarding for you to connect with them, support them and see the impact you’re making over time.
3. Just Fund Portal
4. GuideStar and Guidestar Pro
   1. Direct input from IRS, has 990s with an upgraded login.
   2. Guidestar’s Charity Check is a domestic validation tool.
   3. GuideStar by Candid used to confirm a grantee’s current tax status through Blackbaud Tax Status Plus.
   4. Candid/formerly Guidestar’s database. Nonprofits with Platinum and Gold seals share more information than others.
   5. A good jumping off point if someone has no current community connections.
5. MacArthur’s 100 & Change plan partnered with Candid to create a database of all the organizations who applied and passed their screens, just didn’t win the competition: 100& Change Solutions Bank. (A donor collaborative which conducted heavy due diligence)
6. Co-Impact
7. Blue Meridien
8. Lever for Change and Lever for Change’s Bold Solutions Network
9. Nonprofit Finance Fund a database of org’s with intense due diligence.
10. Impact Matters uses a cost-effectiveness approach to rate charities. Rates nonprofits on their impact — how much good a nonprofit achieves per dollar of cost. Overall this platform is step forward in the open-sourcing of diligence information, and is more useful than Charity Navigator which solely rates on “overhead” metrics which can be harmful and misleading.
11. Pro Publica’s Nonprofit Explorer has a free, open database of every nonprofit in the US with its 990 available.  Use this database to view summaries of 3 million tax returns from tax-exempt organizations and see financial details such as their executive compensation and revenue and expenses. You can browse IRS data released since 2013 and access more than 14 million tax filing documents going back as far as 2001.
12. Youth Giving: A hub for youth giving to build awareness, knowledge, and collaboration.
13. GenerationOn supports youth in communities across the country and around the world in completing hands-on service projects to address local needs.
14. Bolder Giving: Search inspiring stories by individuals who give “boldly” by different types of categories.
15. Causes: The world’s largest online campaigning platform to help people discover, support, and organize campaigns around the issues that impact their community.
16. http://www.myphilanthropedia.org/ – Works to improve nonprofit effectiveness by directing money to and facilitating discussion about expert recommended high-impact nonprofits. Search for top charities by keyword or cause rated on their impact and other organizational strengths.
17. University of Pennsylvania Center for High Impact Philanthropy (Giving Guides)
18. Excellence in Giving
19. Give Well: non-profit charity assessment and effective altruism-focused organization. GiveWell focuses primarily on the cost-effectiveness of the organizations that it evaluates, rather than traditional metrics such as the percentage of the organization’s budget that is spent on overhead.
20. Grapevine:Makes it easy for donors to give more strategically with access to expert guidance and philanthropic tools.
21. Great Nonprofits: cooperative platform for aggregating of “stakeholder reviews” of nonprofit organizations. Partners join cooperative to receive technology and syndicated distribution of review content. We do not write any reviews ourselves; we aggregate and make accessible the stories told by stakeholders in all types of nonprofit organizations.

Cause and Geographic specific sources:

22. Global Giving: The first and largest global crowdfunding community that connects nonprofits, donors, and companies around the world (International, by country, filter by recognition criteria)
23. Global Fund for Women lists all their partners, grantees and sub-grantees globally: Grant Search Tool
24. If the donor is looking to give abroad and wants to know if there already exists an Equivalency Determination they can use, TechSoup’s NGOsource as a great validation tool.
25. Fidelity Charitable’sDisaster Relief Guidance
26. Animal Charity Evaluators (Animal welfare)
27. The Life You Can Save (Global Health, global hunger, etc)
28. Blueprints (Youth Development)
29. Democracy Fund (Democracy, voter engagement, civic engagement, government accountability etc.)
30. Draper Richards Kaplan portfolio (social justice, poverty, education, civic engagement, and more)
31. Conrad Hilton Foundation grantees (Foster youth, homelessness, safe water, and more)
32. Hewlett Foundation grantees (Global development, performing arts, climate and energy, SF Bay Area, etc.)
33. Ford Foundation grantees (Civil rights, urban rights, urban/rural land management and more)
34. Fidelity Charitable’sSilicon Valley Give Lists
35. GreenLight Fund’s portfolio (by regions)
36. Catalogue for Philanthropy, Greater Washington
37. Robin Hood’s portfolio (New York—poverty, early childhood, education, income security, survival)
38. Funding the Ocean: Online knowledge hub designed to track, inform and inspire ocean conservation philanthropy
39. The Opportunity Index for Northern Virginia–  a project of the CF of NoVa.
40. Greater Washington Catalogue for Philanthropy (Washington, D.C.)
41. Greater Madison Nonprofit Directory powered by Candid. We subscribe and offer free access via our website. Nonprofits appreciate the visibility and some work to enhance their profiles; donors value the tool to help make more informed giving decisions.
42. In the Jewish space: Upstart and Slingshot – and I consistently find that they have very good information on lesser-known organizations.
43. Still in the works but soon to be live is something called Jgivewhich will help people find Israeli charities that are vetted for proper management and quality of services.

Other resources and recommendations:

• I still believe this is a people-driven business, so I tap an extensive network of funders and colleagues for input during the sourcing and due diligence phases, but no websites besides Guidestar. I think websites hold some promise for smaller donors, but in my experience, UHNW donors want advice from humans. Where I think there is some overlap is small groups of experts who advise donors that have particular interests and publish recommendations to their websites, such as https://borealisphilanthropy.org/.

• As far as online resources go, I have found this link through Giving Compass to be useful for searching for issue funds or specific nonprofits: https://givingcompass.org/giving-money/. The nonprofit search feature is linked to Charity Navigator.

• It’s not an online resource but I have reached out to local community foundations or United Ways if I’m trying to surface a list of reputable organizations in a given topic area. For example, I have a client that’s based in AZ and I’m researching potential orgs in their two areas of focus. The AZ community foundation ran a list for me of orgs that their donors have given to frequently and have passed their basic screens. This wasn’t true “due diligence” in my book but it gave me a starting list that I could then explore more deeply myself using Guidestar (for 990 review, etc).

• That said, I find internet-based research to be really limiting. It’s essential to know that a nonprofit is legitimate (in the eyes of the IRS) and their financials are in good standing (via 990 review) but this doesn’t give me any real data on impact, reputation, the substance or efficacy of their programs, etc. I also think it’s easy to be swayed by a good website and well-crafted messaging. In my mind, nothing replaces a direct and substantive conversation with the grantee org (and potentially their other funders, clients, etc).