This chapter shares a few additional resources to support our research into charities. These websites and platforms complement the research methodology I’ve laid out in my Charity Research Guide (Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3), which outlines practical criteria and methods for evaluating organizations as an individual donor. I recommend using these websites below to fill in my research table template.
Researching a charity can get overwhelming fast. The websites listed below are meant to make the process a bit easier and save us some time. It’s not a complete list – just a selection of tools that are either widely used or particularly helpful. If you’ve come across something else that works well, feel free to share it in the comments!
These websites are mainly charity evaluation organizations that rate and rank charities. While these can be useful starting points, I’m generally cautious about relying too heavily on rankings like these – which is exactly why I wrote this Charity Research Guide in the first place. In my experience, these rankings tend to be quite narrow in scope. They often lean heavily on what’s easiest to access – like publicly available data such as tax returns – and end up overemphasizing it because it’s so easy to quantify.
This focus on particular metrics can also influence what charities choose to prioritize. When organizations start shaping their operations around these metrics, it can discourage innovation, push them toward short-term, easily measurable interventions, and move attention away from deeper, long-term change. It can also create pressure to “look good” in the rankings instead of staying true to mission-driven work. I’ve included additional critiques below under each organization.
Websites for charity research
Charity Intelligence Canada
- Scope and focus
- Focuses on evaluating Canadian registered charities.
- Primarily geared towards individual donors in Canada.
- Focuses on charities with higher donor interest, not the full list of 86,000+ Canadian charities.
- In their words, they are Canada’s “go-to trusted source for information on Canadian charities”.
- Reach and coverage
- Offer full reports on 800+ charities and brief profiles on thousands more.
- Have conducted 280 impact assessments on Canadian charities using evidence-based research methodology.
- Widely used by Canadian donors with over 600,000 website visits annually; the organization estimates it influenced $112 million in charitable giving in 2022.
- Type of information provided on charities
- Star ratings (0-5 stars) based on transparency, results reporting, need for funding, demonstrated impact, and ‘cents to the cause’ (the inverse of overhead spending).
- Provides financial data, including program spending, administrative costs, and fundraising costs.
- Provides link to financial statements, which are sometimes not publicly available on the charity’s website.
- My evaluation of this resource:
- Their evaluations focus heavily on transparency – a combined 50% of their rating comes from transparency in finances and results reporting, but without any actual analysis of this information. Strangely, even charities that don’t publish financial statements can still receive high rankings. For example, Against Malaria Foundation Canada is listed among their Top 10 Impact Charities of 2024 despite not sharing this data.
- Only 20% of their ranking comes from impact analysis, but their Social Return on Investment (SROI) model is flawed. This method assigns monetary values to social outcomes, which is subjective and oversimplifies these topics. This analysis is also missing for most organizations.
- This organization has been criticized for having too simplistic models, limited expert staff, and even has been accused of being politically influenced.
- Interestingly, they rate themselves as a charity on their own website and give themselves a 5-star rating!
- I consider this a valuable entry point for research, especially for financial information, but it is not enough to rely on alone.
Charity Navigator
- Scope and focus:
- Focuses on evaluating U.S.-based registered charities with some coverage of international charities registered in the U.S.
- Primarily geared towards individual donors in the U.S.
- Evolved over time from purely financial ratings to a multi-dimensional evaluation model.
- Reach and coverage
- Evaluates over 225,000 charities rated, with in-depth ratings for around 9,000 organizations.
- Has 11 million site visitors annually, making it a go-to source of information.
- Type of information provided on charities
- Offers star ratings (0–4 stars) based on impact, accountability and finance, culture and community, and leadership.
- Displays impact scores where applicable, using data charities submit or that is independently sourced.
- Finance section provides simple ratios to investigate overheads, fundraising, and reserves.
- Provides recommended charities by specific response – ie. Hurricane Milton, Gaza crisis, Sudan crisis.
- My evaluation of this resource:
- This site is a much more comprehensive and useful version of Charity Intelligence Canada. It is a shame that this resource does not exist for Canadian charities.
- It is strong at highlighting fiscal responsibility and governance, but impact data is still limited for many charities.
- It has been criticized for relying too much on IRS reporting, for overemphasizing expense ratios (low overheads), and for not properly measuring impact.
Canada Helps
- Scope and focus:
- Primarily a donation platform, helping Canadians give to registered charities online.
- Also functions as a technology provider for charities, offering fundraising tools and generation of tax receipts.
- Does not aim to evaluate or rank charities – its goal is to facilitate giving, not assess impact.
- Reach and coverage
- Supports every registered charity in Canada – over 86,000 organizations are accessible.
- Widespread adoption in Canada: 4.4 million Canadians and 30,000 charities use the site.
- Processes over $300 million in donations annually on behalf of individuals, companies, and foundations.
- Type of information provided on charities
- Provides basic profiles of charities, including descriptions, mission statements, and CRA-registered financials.
- Hosts information on current fundraising campaigns, including custom content provided by charities.
- Provides an annual Giving Report, which examines philanthropy trends in Canada. There is lots of interesting information there.
- My evaluation of this resource:
- This site is useful for making donations and checking reported financials from CRA.
- Does not offer evaluations or vetting, so users seeking impact data will need to use it alongside evaluative platforms.
Charitydata.ca
- Scope and focus:
- Focuses on financial and organizational data of Canadian registered charities.
- Makes charity CRA filings more accessible.Does not evaluate or rate charities – purely a data access tool.
- Designed for donors, researchers, journalists who want direct access to government-reported information.
- Reach and coverage
- Includes every charity registered with the CRA – over 86,000 organizations.
- Data goes back to 2003.
- Pulls data directly from T3010 tax filings, ensuring comprehensive national coverage.
- Type of information provided on charities
- Presents detailed financial data: revenues, expenses, assets, staff compensation, etc.
- Displays historical data so users can track changes over time.
- Lists basic operational info, including programs, geographic scope, and contact details.
- My evaluation of this resource:
- This site provides neutral presentation of raw data, which is useful to fact-check.
- It is not user-friendly for beginners, requiring comfort with financial statements.
- Best used as a reference to check historical financial data trends.
GlobalGiving
- Scope and focus:
- A crowdfunding platform that connects donors with grassroots projects around the world.
- Prioritizes local organizations that may otherwise lack access to large-scale fundraising.
- It is geared towards U.S. donors (provides U.S. tax receipts).
- Small communities around the world can upload their idea for a project and seek funding from international donors.
- Reach and coverage
- Hosts thousands of vetted nonprofits in over 175 countries
- $989 million has been raised to date for more than 33,000 projects.
- Type of information provided on projects
- While most websites list charities for funding, this site lists specific projects and provides relevant project details.
- Each project profile includes descriptions, funding goals, updates, and outcomes, typically written by the nonprofit itself.
- My evaluation of this resource:
- The organization is well-regarded, and it’s focus on community-driven projects is great, so if you’re looking for small international projects to support, look here.
- The due diligence and vetting that they do for the projects seems to be comprehensive and appropriate (overly burdensome compliance requirements would discourage small local projects from being included).
- Vetting does not include comparative evaluation – it doesn’t rank or rate charities based on effectiveness.
- They take a 5-12% fee on all transactions to cover their own operations, plus there is a 3-5% fee to the payment processing company. This is very high compared to sites like GoFundMe (2.9%), but the benefits are worth it due to the costly vetting process.
GiveWell
- Scope and focus:
- Global nonprofit evaluator focused on identifying exceptionally cost-effective charities, primarily in global health and poverty alleviation.
- It aims to find charities that can save or improve lives the most per dollar donated, often operating in low-income countries.
- Strongly aligned with effective altruism principles, especially the focus on measurable, evidence-backed interventions.
- Reach and coverage
- GiveWell conducts deep evaluations of a small number of top charities – typically fewer than 10 are recommended each year.
- Although based in California, evaluations focus on global programs, not domestic U.S. or Canadian charities.
- Since 2007, 125,000 donors have used the site, directing over $2 billion to their recommended charities.
- Type of information provided on charities
- Offers detailed reports on each top charity, including cost-effectiveness analysis, funding analysis, and ongoing monitoring data.
- It has conducted in-depth reviews on over 50 charities since its founding but only provides research for their few recommended charities (currently only four total).
- Includes cost per life saved statistic (ie. for Against Malaria Foundation, $5,500 donated equates to one life saved).
- My evaluation of this resource:
- See Chapter 10 for my full thoughts on this website.
- It has faced criticism for being too narrowly focused, especially on health-based interventions with easily quantifiable outcomes, potentially overlooking equally important but less measurable causes.
- Very limited scope – does not evaluate most charities or provide tools for finding organizations in your own country or region.
- Since their recommended charities are so few, these few organizations receive large amounts of funding.
- I would only use this website if you fully ascribe to the effective altruism-style of thinking, which in my opinion, has many flaws.