Your nonprofit is considering hiring a consultant to assist with a certain project or task. But how do you know if you’re ready to bring on outside assistance, and how can you choose the best expert for your organization?
In this quick guide, we’ll discuss whether your nonprofit is ready to work with a consultant. Then, we’ll cover how to choose the right partner if you are.
At Charity Navigator, we recognize the importance of Constituent Feedback, a practice whereby a nonprofit collects feedback from its beneficiaries and then utilizes what it learns in its decision-making process. In February 2021, we shared in a co-authored blog post, our intent to showcase nonprofits and their constituent feedback
practices within their Charity Navigator profiles.
Today, we are pleased to feature one such organization -- Pace Center for Girls Inc., an Encompass rated organization with an overall 100 out of 100 score, which includes a perfect score of 100 within the Culture & Community beacon where
Constituent Feedback resides.
At Pace Center for Girls, we understand that, for girls to change their lives, they and their families must have a voice in shaping their present and futures. This is why during the past 35 years, we have elevated the voices of more than 40,000 girls. Providing year-round academic and social services through a gender responsive, trauma-informed, and strength-based lens, Pace has used feedback to change the life trajectories of girls who are likely to have experienced risk factors associated with delinquency and adverse childhood experiences.
Opportunity may be knocking louder and harder than ever before for committed nonprofit organizations and the generous donors who are their lifeblood. Since bottoming out at the outset of the coronavirus pandemic on March 23, 2020, U.S. markets have staged a relentless rebound, with the S&P 500 ripping off a one-year advance of 76 percent, and the NASDAQ soaring a stunning 95 percent over the same period. For investors, that has resulted in hundreds of billions of dollars in as-yet-unrealized capital gains. Now, a substantial increase in the capital gains tax rate for top earners appears likely to happen.
I vividly remember my first Pride march. It was my first summer in New York, and I really did not know what to expect. Through friends, I had gathered together a group of fellow queer folks, and we decided to attend a full weekend of activities planned by the official NYC Pride. To this day, that weekend ranks as one of my favorite and most special weekends.
There’s no doubt that we live in a mobile-obsessed era. About 81% of Americans own a smartphone of some kind, and studies show that American adults spend about 3.5 hours per day on their phones.
To nonprofit fundraising professionals, these numbers mean one thing: without a strategy for mobile giving, you’re missing out on a major fundraising opportunity. By pursuing mobile-giving campaigns, you can boost your visibility and your funding by providing supporters with a highly convenient donation channel on a device they use all the time.
Six billion dollars.
In and out of philanthropic circles, MacKenzie Scott’s $6 billion gift in 2020 has caused quite a stir — and that’s putting it mildly. Divided among a reported 500 organizations, the novelist and philanthropist’s generosity in 2020 was directed to Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), tribal and community colleges, as well as organizations committed to social and human services, equity, climate change, and democracy.
My name is Tyler Stahl, and I am a Front End Web Developer at Charity Navigator. In tech jargon, “front end” refers to everything viewable by you, the user of Charity Navigator’s web services, while “back end” refers to the databases, rating calculations and infrastructure that power the front end. This means that I manage our website, from star rating pages, to the Giving Basket, to charity search results. Over the past year, I am proud to have helped bring the vision of the new Encompass Rating System to your screens, extending ratings to tens of thousands of previously unrated organizations.
The recently proposed “For the 99.5% Act” would bring dramatic changes to gift and estate taxes while proposals in both houses of Congress and the White House would impose immediate income taxation on gifted and inherited gains.
As a small nonprofit organization, you’re already doing good work to help your surrounding community. But sometimes the financial resources you need for continued success aren’t readily available.
Raising the funds you need to continue your programs, cover overhead costs, and serve your constituents and mission isn’t always easy. But there’s one source of revenue that you might not have already tapped into: corporate matching gifts.
As someone who believes in giving back to my community, I’ve spent many years building meaningful connections with the nonprofits working in the causes I care deeply about. Through this effort, my wife and I have focused on supporting charities through three key areas, commonly known as time, talent, and treasure. As I shared before in my previous Charity Navigator blog, I prefer to invest deeply in organizations to compound my impact. Below, you’ll find some of the reasons I choose to invest my time and talent in addition to my treasure, and why you should consider this as well.
At Charity Navigator, we recognize the importance of Constituent Feedback, a practice whereby a nonprofit collects feedback from its beneficiaries and then utilizes what it learns in its decision-making process. In February 2021, we shared in a co-authored blog post, our intent to showcase nonprofits and their constituent feedback practices within their Charity Navigator profiles.
Today, we are pleased to feature one such organization -- the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, an Encompass rated organization with an overall 100 out of 100 score, which includes a perfect score of 100 within the Culture & Community
beacon where Constituent Feedback resides.
The National Coalition for Homeless Veterans (NCHV) is the only nationally-based organization solely focused on finding effective solutions for ending veteran homelessness and plays the role of convener and advocate for member organizations. Our membership consists of a variety of organizations, from large multi-state agencies all the way down to smaller community-based providers.
As we dive deeper into 2021, you’re probably still working toward those ambitious goals you set at the beginning of the year. You may have even kept your New Year's resolution thus far! However, there’s one upcoming event that very few people look forward to during a new year, and that’s tax season.
On Thursday March 12, 2020, as the world around us was coming to a grinding halt, National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) NYC made the decision to close our offices, for an indefinite period of time. For nearly 40 years, our doors have remained open, through snowstorms and hurricane aftermaths, on Saturdays and even on Christmas Day, but this was different.
Welcome to our Meet The Team series, where each month we will introduce a
member of the Charity Navigator team to our readers. Millions of visitors come to
Charity Navigator annually, and they may be surprised to learn that we're a staff of 24!
We often proudly state that we are a "small yet mighty team"-- achieving a lot with the resources we have, while staying focused on our mission. We are extremely honored to be a part of the nonprofit community where our footprint (and our ratings!) have expanded, and we are incredibly appreciative of the support received from our donors and users, nonprofits, and funders. We hope this series will be enlightening and entertaining. Click here for other profiles.
My name is Marisa Andreazza, and I have been a part of the Charity Navigator team for a little over two years. Prior to joining Charity Navigator, I was able to get a taste of the nonprofit sector by volunteering and by working as an intern as I completed my bachelor’s and master’s degrees. As an intern for organizations in the environmental space, I assisted with a bit of everything –from working on targeted advocacy campaigns, to helping with non-profit administration.
Many great nonprofits are built on incredible volunteer programs. Not only do volunteers deliver operational efficiencies (free labor!) but they are also the best donors (per Fidelity Charitable, volunteers donate 10x more over their lifetimes and over 60% of donors volunteered last year).
Great volunteer programs share a number of attributes, including…
But more than that, great volunteer programs have great volunteer managers and great volunteers. Today, we at Golden, introduce you to two.
Our multifaceted approach includes evolving our ratings to assess key measures of equity, generating Hot Topics to help donors support organizations founded by diverse leaders dedicated to bridging inequities, and partnering with nonprofits to better tell the story of the unmet and often misunderstood needs that uniquely impact underserved communities.
We’re proud to highlight On The Same Page, a campaign run by Professor Cathryn Edelstein and students enrolled in the Nonprofit Communication Management Program at Emerson College. Through the campaign, they have spearheaded an effort to provide diverse literature to Boston Public schools.
How does it feel to seldom see your identity represented in a story you read? What does it mean to your self-esteem if someone with your skin color, your family’s background, your disability, or someone that speaks your language is missing from the literature in your school’s library? Plain and simple, “I - and my experiences - don’t matter.”
Entering year two of the COVID-19 pandemic with 115 million cases worldwide (29 million in the United States) and 2.6 million deaths (nearly 525,000 in the US), it is still difficult to understand the toll this pandemic has taken on all our lives.
The pandemic continues to overwhelm health care, societal and economic infrastructures. In the US, even with a renewed focus on providing support for pandemic recovery, there is still confusion about how best to address viral spread and its downstream effects such as mental health, economic and social unrest. Finally, there is concern on a global scale about how to ensure equitable vaccine distribution.
Earth and our efforts to conserve it are far too important to be observed on just one day. We consider all of April, Earth Month, a time to renew our focus on preserving, caring for, and honoring our planet. Earth Day’s importance has become more critical beyond one day. With a wealth of valuable information online surrounding the day, exploring its meaning, impact, and ways to get involved, we wanted to include several links here to guide your reading for Earth Day 2021 on April 22.
All our lives we’ve been taught that one of the best questions you can ask in researching a charity is, “How much do they pay their CEO?” If the number’s low, that means they respect your donation. If the number’s high it means they don’t, and there’s something fishy going on.
What if we’ve got it all wrong?
We've been celebrating Women's History Month with features of Charity Navigator's innovative female leaders. We close the month with a highlight of a member of our analyst team.
Today, we’re celebrating #WomensHistoryMonth by featuring Maggie Kurnyta!
Maggie is Charity Navigator’s Program Analyst and has been with us for over three years.
Water for South Sudan’s (WFSS) local, sustainable work is changing lives, one well at a time. Every day, we see firsthand how access to essential clean water, hygiene, and sanitation impacts entire communities. But we never dreamed that the need would be made even more critical in the face of a global pandemic.
This week, for Women's History Month, we’re featuring our Major Gifts Officer, Grace Dowd!
Deductions reduce the amount of taxable income when filing a federal income tax return. In other words, they can reduce the amount of tax someone owes.
Most taxpayers have a choice of either taking the standard deduction or itemizing their deductions. The standard deduction may be quicker and easier, but, itemizing deductions may lower taxes more, in some situations. For this reason, it's important for taxpayers to look into which deduction method is best suited for them and their family.
My wife and I are very intentional with our philanthropy - we consider the research and subsequent monitoring and evaluation of our philanthropic investments a part-time job. Charity Navigator has played an important role in helping us find and support deserving nonprofits. I recently wrote two articles where I outlined our giving strategy as well as how we use benchmarking to decide which nonprofits to support.
March means we’re celebrating #WomensHistoryMonth! Throughout the month, we’ll highlight our innovative female leaders who make Charity Navigator the accomplished organization it is.
This week, we’re featuring Nancy Sadek.
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| 'Fearless Girl' Statue (New York City, NY) |
March means we’re celebrating #WomensHistoryMonth! Throughout the month, we’ll highlight our innovative female leaders who make Charity Navigator the accomplished organization it is.
Kicking things off is Julia Bieniek, our HR & Operations Manager.
Written by Stephen Rockwell, Chief Ratings Technology Officer, and Ofira Bondorowsky,
Director of Ratings & Nonprofit Engagement, at Charity Navigator. Stephen leads
the team of charity analysts, program specialists, and development engineers
that launched the new Encompass rating methodology and criteria. Ofira facilitated
the development of Constituent Feedback measures with our partners as part of her
responsibilities to lead Charity Navigator’s engagement with nonprofit organizations.
Charity Navigator’s Encompass Rating System evolution marks another significant milestone with our Beta V3 release today. We launched Encompass last July with the intention of rapidly iterating our ratings by both adding new domains of evaluation and improving on existing domains. Beta V3 does both:
This is a follow up to the blog posted on December 8, 2020: "Donor Perspective: Leveraging Charity Navigator to find and support deserving nonprofits.”
Charity Navigator has played an important role in my philanthropic planning -- my wife and I use their ratings to surface fiscally responsible and effective charities for consideration. With so many different organizations to consider supporting, we’ve found benchmarking an important step in selecting the right charity to make an investment in.
What drives someone to give? While it’s safe to say that many associate the primary force behind donating comes from a positive place, that may not always be true. Many times, the initial spark of desire to donate originates from somewhere else. Maybe we read something or saw something online that angered, scared, or made us feel overwhelming sadness. These feelings are what forces us to realize that something must change. It’s these emotions that deeply impact us and sometimes propels us to act.
With a few short hours to go before New Year’s Eve, you remember that you were supposed to make a resolution for the new year. You quickly think through all of the possibilities: "What's something I can easily keep up with while simultaneously promising to set my year on a meaningful and productive course? Exercise? Drink less coffee? Read more? Spend less?"
Inevitably, you’ll land on something you are bound to abandon by the end of January.
Even if you have not yet made a resolution this year, but have a desire to do so, take some time to consider how you have benefited from others’ generosity. Then, think about how you can pay things forward in 2021.
Here are a few tips to get you started in making and keeping resolutions for yourself:
The term working capital has been used in the for-profit industry for a long time. It is usually defined as the difference between a company’s current assets and its current liabilities. It is traditionally used as a liquidity metric in the form of a dollar amount. In addition, many individual financial plans include having a savings account, often referred to as “rainy day funds”, to be used when the “storm” comes. Many have also likely heard the old adage of putting aside funds to cover at least 3-6 months of living expenses for emergencies (loss of job, unexpected expenses, etc.).
My wife grew up poor. Her father was killed in a tragic accident when she was a toddler. She always said, “If my mother hadn’t run welfare in our small Montana town, we would have been on it.” We met in the air over the Pacific in 1985. She was returning from back-to-back Air Force tours as a mental health therapist in Korea and the Philippines. Lynnette was headed for a small clinic in Texas and I was going to take a Tropical Medicine course. We chatted, never expecting to see each other again, but in 1986 re-met at our thousand-bed medical center in San Antonio and married two years later. At dinner that week she said, “Peter, I’m a Lt Colonel; you’re a full bird. We can easily live on one salary and give the rest away to help our community.”
Dear friends of Charity Navigator,
The year 2020 had a way of stripping away all that was not essential in our lives, our work and our giving. While no one could have predicted how 2020 would unfold, it is extremely heartening that millions of people stepped up more than ever before, to support the causes close to their hearts in their efforts to make things better for others and our world. Giving was essential in 2020. Charity Navigator was an essential tool of choice for many in their giving decisions this year. Our work matters. If you are reading this, it’s safe to assume that you use Charity Navigator and maybe even support us directly. Thank you for your generosity and investments in us and through us in 2020. Although we are still very much in the midst of the pandemic, your generosity makes a difference.
