Charity Navigator

Ken Berger, who led the country’s most prominent nonprofit watchdog, Charity Navigator, for almost seven years, abruptly left his job this week after the board decided to find a leader with more expertise in technology. "Charity Navigator has been going through a planning process and doing a lot of thinking about where we’re headed next," Berger said in an interview. "As part of that, the organization is increasingly seeing itself as a technology company."

To best serve your multiple constituencies it's vital that your site functions as more than a simple online brochure. Here are 25 nonprofits website musts.

Here are four nonprofit giving trends gleaned from data pulled from thousands of donations made last year through Fashion Project to a wide variety of nonprofit types.

A federal judge handed open-records activist Carl Malamud a victory in his battle to get the Internal Revenue Service to release Form 990 tax returns in a format that can be read by computers, thus making information about nonprofit operations far more accessible. U.S. District Judge William Orrick rejected the IRS's argument that producing the documents requested by Malamud's group, Public.Resource.Org, would create a significant burden on an overstretched agency.

Ted Hart speaks with Art Taylor, president and CEO of the BBB Wise Giving Alliance; Jacob Harold, president and CEO of GuideStar; and Ken Berger, president and CEO of Charity Navigator, about the overhead myth on his Nonprofit Coach radio show.

The charity event Awesome Games Done Quick, a weeklong gaming livestream featured on the video-streaming site Twitch, raised more than $1.5 million for charity research earlier this month, benefiting the Prevent Cancer Foundation. How it did it says a lot about the value of embracing niche audiences online.

The weeklong gaming marathon was hosted at a physical location, but the momentum and energy behind the event was really online, where people could watch speedrunners play live, chat about it, donate money and potentially win some prizes.

Charles Huang partnered with two college friends to develop Charitweet, a start-up that simplifies the donation process to just one tweet. Most donations are typically made on charity websites. Then people share separately on social media. This process is a broken experience, Huang said.

With Charitweet, donors write a tweet with any combination of the charity's handle, Charitweet's handle and the donation amount. Without leaving Twitter, someone can donate money, spread awareness about the cause and share efforts with friends, who can retweet a message to also donate.

Most of us are alarmed by the almost unbelievable disparity in Ferguson’s civic life that is fueling the protests. African-Americans are two-thirds of the city’s population, but whites serve as mayor, five of six city councilors, six of seven school board members and 50 of 52 police officers.

However, are we alarmed at the nonprofit sector’s own lack of representation? Despite groundbreaking efforts by the Center for Diversity and the Environment, the D5 Coalition, Green 2.0 and New Generation of African-American Philanthropists, the glaring disparity in nonprofit leadership bears a striking similarity to Ferguson.

Ted Hart speaks with Ken Berger, president and CEO of charity watchdog Charity Navigator, about the oft-debated charity watchdog on his Nonprofit Coach radio show.

(Press release, October 21, 2014) — As Americans donate generously this holiday season, the three CEOs of the leading information sources on nonprofits — GuideStar, Charity Navigator and BBB Wise Giving Alliance — issued a joint letter urging charities to help crush the false notion that overhead ratios serve as the sole basis for trusting a charity and to help move toward an Overhead Solution by demonstrating ethical practices, managing toward results and educating funders.