Nonprofits Are Being Required to Provide Hard Facts to Get Funding

"There is a movement for more accountability," said Jeff Mason, chairman of a newly formed group of nonprofit leaders called the Alliance for Effective Social Investing that gathers in Washington, D.C. "If you want to get funding, you're going to have to demonstrate that you can perform."

Mason said the alliance is devoted to identifying top-performing nonprofits and driving more money to them. The group's biggest coup: persuading two key Web sites for donor giving, Charity Navigator and Guidestar, to revamp their rating systems so that a nonprofit's social effectiveness, not just its financial performance, is evaluated.