Charity Navigator Empowers Millions of Donors With Redesigned Website and Nearly 200,000 Charity Ratings

Enhanced search experience makes it easy for donors to find and give to effective organizations

NOVEMBER 2, 2022 - New York, NY - Charity Navigator, the nation’s most influential independent evaluator of charities, today unveiled a new website for donors that includes a powerful, reinvented search experience and a streamlined design to help donors easily find and support organizations working on causes close to their hearts. These upgrades will allow Charity Navigator to better serve 11+ million donors and nearly 200,000 rated charities.

“The decision to donate to a charity is deeply personal and complex – one that starts from the heart and is guided by the head,” said Michael Thatcher, President & CEO of Charity Navigator. “Our improved platform reduces the guesswork of that decision by empowering donors to quickly find the charities doing the most impactful work that aligns with their passions and then take action.”

The revamped website has been designed for a better user experience and features tools that help individuals, foundations, and corporations donate, volunteer, and raise awareness for causes they care about. These include a new search engine that guides donors to the most effective and efficient organizations aligned with their values. Even without knowing the exact name of a charitable organization, donors can now search by topic area and other parameters.

The site also highlights Charity Navigator’s expanded ratings, which provide a holistic view of a charity’s effectiveness and reliability through a nuanced and evolved method of evaluation. After 20 years of guiding donors with resources for intelligent giving, the updated framework illuminates overall charity health through four areas: Impact & Results, Accountability & Finance, Leadership & Adaptability, and Culture & Community.

“Charity Navigator is an essential partner in the mission of the Gates Foundation’s Philanthropic Partnerships team to inspire and enable more informed and intentional generosity by all,” said Victoria Vrana, Deputy Director of Philanthropic Partnerships at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. “Charity Navigator’s expanded ratings and redesigned site will present a more complete view of nonprofits’ impact and enhance the giving experience for millions of donors. We are particularly excited to see the Culture & Community dimension of the Charity Navigator ratings framework, which, over time, has the potential to bust the ‘overhead myth’ – and help donors understand what truly makes a high performing nonprofit.”

Other features include its Giving Basket, which empowers donors to give to one or multiple nonprofits in a single checkout; Give Now (formerly Hot Topic) curated lists of charities responding to crises; alerts about charity scams or organizations accused of misconduct; an extensive array of tips for making informed, safe, and strategic giving decisions; and more. 

“We are honored to support Charity Navigator in its efforts to provide donors with more information through enhanced search and deeper ratings,” said Andrew Dunckelman, Head of Impact and Insights at Google.org. “These changes will allow donors to find organizations that have significant and lasting impact and will help democratize giving and promote transparency in the philanthropic sector.”

Donors and charities are invited to explore the new site, and charities are invited to submit detailed information through their dedicated portal to meet Charity Navigator’s comprehensive rating system criteria.

The work was made possible through the generous support of more than 100,000 Charity Navigator

donors, including significant contributions by MacKenzie Scott, Google.org, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Fidelity Charitable Trustees' Initiative.

About Charity Navigator:

Charity Navigator is a 501(c)(3) organization that guides intelligent giving with the nation's largest, most comprehensive charity evaluation tool. The organization helps donors easily identify U.S.-registered charities making a difference on the issues they care about most while helping charities better understand their donors, deliver on impact, increase awareness, and build trust. Learn more at charitynavigator.org.

MEDIA CONTACTS: 

Kylee Siaw / ksiaw@momentum-cg.com

Zach Halper / zhalper@momentum-cg.com