I Beg to Differ

I take a back seat to no one in my admiration of the Nonprofit Finance Fund, so it pains me to dissent from Rebecca Thomas’s thoughtful article, "New Ways to Rate Charities Don’t Help Donors Make Smart Bets," published in the Chronicle of Philanthropy, but dissent I must.  The simple answer to her important questions – “So why the rush to rate and rank? Why not provide information and let donors decide?” – is that donors aren’t willing to wade through unprocessed information about nonprofits to make more informed decisions about which charities to support.  Given the choice between making steady improvements in sites like Charity Navigator and continuing to leave donors without any meaningful guidance about which nonprofits are most effective, I’ll take better rankings every time.

SIF and the Office of Inspector General: Time to Chill

Before we jump the gun once again, perhaps it would be a good idea to understand what the OIG does first.