Why Doesn't Charity Navigator Care About Impacts?

A couple of months ago, we talked about inputs, activities, outputs and outcomes, saying that the closer you can get to measuring whether you actually help people, the better you are.

Charity Navigator measures the amount spent on activities. So according to the organization, you would be better off spending $20 to help 10 people than $10 to help 20 people. As we talked about last week, this biases against the use of volunteers; because they are not paid, any services delivered by them don’t count.

To be fair, there’s usually a correlation between amount spent and outcomes (that’s why it’s so unfortunate that Charity Navigator biases against larger organizations). However, when that goes off the rails, Charity Navigator is the last to know.