How to Evaluate a Charity Before You Give

August 11, 2026

How to Evaluate a Charity Before You Give

Donor checking charity information at desk

You can confidently evaluate a charity in under 15 minutes using three free public tools: the IRS Tax Exempt Organization Search, a ratings site, and the charity’s Form 990. Here is where to start right now:

Verify legal status: Search the charity’s name or EIN on the IRS Tax Exempt Organization Search to confirm it holds 501©(3) status.
Check a ratings page: Open Charity Navigator, CharityWatch, or BBB’s Give.org and look up the organization’s score and accountability flags.
Skim the Form 990: Find the charity’s most recent 990 on GuideStar/Candid or ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer. Go straight to Part IX and divide program service expenses by total expenses. If that number is below 65%, ask why.

That three-step check catches the vast majority of red flags before you ever write a check.

Key Takeaways

The most reliable way to evaluate a charity is to combine a free IRS status check, a ratings site review, and a Form 990 program expense calculation before you give.

Point	Details
Verify legal status first	Confirm 501©(3) status and EIN on the IRS Tax Exempt Organization Search before anything else.
Use two rating sources	Charity Navigator covers financial ratios; BBB Give.org covers governance standards. Together they give a fuller picture.
Program expense % is your anchor number	Divide program expenses by total expenses in Part IX of the Form 990; below 65% across multiple years warrants a direct question.
Governance signals matter as much as ratios	Check board independence, conflict-of-interest policy, and audit availability in Part VI of the 990.
Impact evidence beats activity counts	Look for outcome metrics, independent evaluations, and peer-reviewed research, not just output numbers or testimonials.
HCRF meets these standards	The Hippocratic Cancer Research Foundation publishes its 990, holds NCI-affiliated institutional partnerships, and subjects all funded research to scientific peer review.

What do charity rating services actually measure, and how should you use them?
How to verify tax-exempt status and read the Form 990
What governance and transparency signals should you confirm before giving?
How do you know whether a charity actually achieves results?
How to spot charity scams and give safely
How do you evaluate a charity that has no rating from major watchdogs?
Special checks for medical and research charities
Your donor checklist and ready-to-send email templates
Why careful vetting matters to us, and to every donor
HCRF: a transparent option for donors who care about cancer research
Sources

What do charity rating services actually measure, and how should you use them?

Rating services are not all measuring the same thing, and that distinction matters more than most donors realize. Using only one site can give you a misleadingly clean or misleadingly harsh picture of an organization.

Here is what each major service focuses on:

Charity Navigator scores nonprofits across Accountability & Finance, Culture & Community, and Leadership & Adaptability. Its numeric scores (0–100) are built largely from Form 990 data, so they are strongest for financial transparency checks and weakest for judging actual program results.
CharityWatch uses a letter-grade system (A+ through F) and focuses heavily on how much of every dollar reaches programs versus overhead. It also flags high fundraising costs and excessive executive compensation. CharityWatch analysts review 990s manually, which means their grades can catch nuances an algorithm misses.
BBB Wise Giving Alliance (Give.org) evaluates charities against 20 standards covering governance, finances, and donor communications. A “meets standards” seal is a meaningful signal of organizational discipline, though Give.org covers fewer organizations than Charity Navigator.
Candid/GuideStar is less a rating service and more a data repository. It aggregates 990 filings, organizational profiles, and self-reported program descriptions. You will not find a score here, but you will find raw documents that the other services use to build their ratings.

Ratings sites differ in what they emphasize: some prioritize financial ratios, others accountability standards or evidence of results. Using two complementary sources gives you a fuller picture than any single score can provide.

Pro Tip: If a charity appears on Charity Navigator AND holds a BBB Give.org seal, that combination covers both financial ratios and governance standards. Add a GuideStar profile check for the raw 990 and you have covered three independent data streams in about ten minutes.

How to verify tax-exempt status and read the Form 990

The Form 990 is the single most powerful document available to donors. The IRS requires most public charities to make their 990s publicly available, and donors can access filings and confirm tax-exempt status directly through official IRS records. Here is how to use them.

Step-by-step: checking legal status and reading the 990

Confirm the EIN and 501©(3) status. Go to the IRS Tax Exempt Organization Search, enter the charity’s name or Employer Identification Number, and verify the organization is listed as a public charity in good standing. A missing or revoked listing is an immediate stop sign.
Find the most recent 990. Search the charity on GuideStar/Candid or ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer. Download the most recent full Form 990 (not the 990-EZ or 990-N, which contain far less detail).
Calculate the program expense percentage. Go to Part IX (Statement of Functional Expenses). Add up the “Program service expenses” column and divide by total expenses. Multiply by 100. A result above 75% is generally healthy; below 65% across multiple years is worth a direct question to the charity.
Review revenue sources. Part VIII shows where money comes from. Heavy reliance on a single funder or on professional fundraising firms can signal fragility or high acquisition costs.
Check Schedule G. This schedule reports payments to professional fundraisers. If a charity is paying a third-party firm 50% or more of gross receipts from a campaign, the net reaching programs is far smaller than the headline donation figure suggests.
Look at executive compensation. Part VII lists the five highest-compensated employees. Compensation is not automatically a red flag, but it should be proportionate to the organization’s size and sector norms.
Scan for related-party transactions. Part IV asks whether the organization had business dealings with officers, directors, or key employees. Unexplained “yes” answers here warrant follow-up.

Red-flag pattern to watch: A charity that shows a low program expense percentage in three or more consecutive 990s, combined with high Schedule G fundraising fees, is spending donor dollars primarily on its own operations. ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer makes it easy to pull multiple years of 990s side by side, which is the fastest way to spot a persistent pattern rather than a one-year anomaly.

The 990 is powerful for spotting structural red flags, but it does not prove program effectiveness on its own. Pair financial analysis with impact evidence before making a final giving decision.

What governance and transparency signals should you confirm before giving?

Financial ratios tell you how a charity spends money. Governance signals tell you whether the people running it can be trusted to spend it well. Both matter and the good news is that most of these checks take under five minutes each.

Board composition. A healthy board has a majority of independent members with no financial relationship to the organization. Look for this in the 990 (Part VI) or on the charity’s website. A board dominated by staff members or family of the founder is a structural concern.
Conflict-of-interest policy. Part VI of the 990 asks whether the organization has a written conflict-of-interest policy. A “no” answer is a red flag; a “yes” without any evidence the policy is enforced is worth probing.
Whistleblower and document-retention policies. Also disclosed in Part VI. These policies signal that the organization has basic internal controls.
Audited financial statements. Organizations with annual revenues above $750,000 are generally required to have an independent audit. Ask whether the audit is available and whether it came with a management letter noting any material weaknesses.
Donor privacy policy. The charity’s website should have a clear, posted policy on how it handles donor data. No policy, or a vague one, is a signal of organizational immaturity.
Published impact reports. Does the charity post annual reports or program evaluations on its website? Organizations that measure and publish their results are far more likely to be managing toward outcomes rather than just activity.

Questions to ask the charity directly if details are missing:

“Can you send me your most recent audited financial statements and Form 990?”
“Who sits on your board, and what is your conflict-of-interest policy?”
“How do you measure the success of your programs, and can you share recent outcome data?”

A charity that hesitates to answer any of these questions is telling you something important.

How do you know whether a charity actually achieves results?

Activity and impact are not the same thing. A charity can distribute thousands of meals, train hundreds of volunteers, or run dozens of workshops and still produce no measurable change in the problem it claims to address. The question is not “what did you do?” but “what changed because you did it?”

GiveWell advises donors to prioritize systematic evidence of impact and information about how additional donations would be used, including whether the organization has genuine room for more funding. That framing is useful: a charity that cannot explain what it would do with more money has probably not thought carefully about its own theory of change.

Look for these types of evidence when reviewing a charity’s reports or website:

Outcome metrics, not just output counts. “We served 5,000 people” is an output. “Participants showed a 40% reduction in symptom severity at six-month follow-up” is an outcome. Prefer charities that report the latter.
Independent evaluations. Has a third party evaluated the program? Academic researchers, government agencies, or respected evaluation firms conducting independent reviews carry far more weight than self-reported success stories.
Before-and-after or comparison data. The strongest evidence compares program participants to a similar group that did not receive the intervention. Even a well-designed pre/post survey is more meaningful than anecdotes.
Published methodology. How does the charity collect its outcome data? If the answer is unclear or absent, the numbers may not be reliable.
Peer-reviewed publications or trial registrations. For research and medical charities, published studies or registered clinical trials are the gold standard.

Pro Tip: Testimonials from beneficiaries can be moving and humanizing, but they are not evidence of systematic impact. Use them to understand who the charity serves and how it operates, not to judge whether the program works at scale.

How to spot charity scams and give safely

Scammers follow disasters and headlines. After every major crisis, look-alike organizations appear within days, designed to intercept the surge of donor goodwill. Knowing the warning signs protects both your money and your trust.

Common scam signals:

High-pressure asks with artificial deadlines (“Give in the next 24 hours or we lose the match!”)
Requests for payment by gift card, wire transfer, or cryptocurrency
Names that closely mimic well-known charities (e.g., “American Cancer Society of America” vs. “American Cancer Society”)
URLs that differ by one letter or use a different domain extension from the real organization
Callers who cannot or will not provide an EIN when asked
Vague descriptions of how donations are used

Safe giving practices:

Donate directly through the charity’s official website, confirmed via the IRS search tool
Pay by credit card or check made out to the organization, never to an individual
Confirm the site uses HTTPS before entering payment information
Verify the charity’s EIN before giving, especially if you were contacted by phone or email

If you suspect fraud:

Report it to the FTC at ReportFraud.ftc.gov and to your state’s charity registration office. Most states have an Attorney General’s office that oversees charitable solicitations. Filing a report protects other donors, not just yourself.

How do you evaluate a charity that has no rating from major watchdogs?

Thousands of legitimate, effective nonprofits are too small or too new to appear on Charity Navigator or CharityWatch. The absence of a rating is not a red flag by itself. What matters is whether the organization can answer basic questions about its identity, finances, and programs.

Bridgespan recommends organizing due diligence into Strategy & Results, Leadership, Financials, and Organization & Operations, and using a phased research approach that scales with the size of the gift you are considering.

A phased approach for unrated charities

Phase 1: Quick online checks (15–30 minutes). Confirm the EIN on the IRS Tax Exempt Organization Search. Check whether the charity has a clear, professional website with a stated mission, program descriptions, and contact information. Search GuideStar/Candid for a 990 filing. If no 990 exists and the organization claims to have been operating for more than two years, ask why.
Phase 2: Limited inquiry (1–2 hours). Email or call the organization and ask for its most recent Form 990, audited financials (if applicable), a list of board members, and a description of how it measures program outcomes. A legitimate charity will respond promptly and completely. Note how long it takes and how specific the answers are.
Phase 3: Full inquiry (multiple hours, for large gifts). For a gift of several thousand dollars or more, consider requesting a site visit, a conversation with the executive director, or a review of an independent program evaluation. Ask specifically what the organization would do with your gift and how it would measure success.

The depth of your research should match the size of your commitment. A $50 donation warrants Phase 1. A $5,000 gift warrants Phase 2 at minimum.

Special checks for medical and research charities

Research charities require a different lens. Financial ratios matter, but the deeper question is whether the science is real and whether the institution behind it has genuine credibility. This is where many donors, even careful ones, stop short.

For any charity claiming to fund medical research or clinical trials, look for these signals:

Institutional affiliation. Is the research conducted at or in partnership with an accredited academic medical center or research university? Affiliation with a recognized institution (a National Cancer Institute-designated cancer center, for example) is a meaningful credibility signal that independent organizations cannot easily replicate.
Peer-reviewed publications. Search PubMed or Google Scholar for publications from the researchers the charity funds. Published, peer-reviewed work means the science has survived independent expert scrutiny.
Clinical trial registrations. Legitimate clinical trials are registered at ClinicalTrials.gov before they begin. If a charity claims to fund trials, you can verify those trials exist and are actively enrolling.
Funding reports and grant disclosures. Does the charity publish a list of funded projects, the researchers receiving grants, and the amounts awarded? Transparency at this level is rare and valuable.
Independent peer review of grant decisions. Does a scientific advisory board review grant applications? Who sits on it, and are their credentials publicly listed?

For donors interested in cancer research funding, the HCRF (Hippocratic Cancer Research Foundation) demonstrates these signals directly: its funded research is conducted at the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University, an NCI-designated comprehensive cancer center, and its grant decisions involve scientific review. That institutional anchor is exactly the kind of verifiable, third-party credibility that separates serious research funders from organizations that simply use research language in their marketing.

For breast cancer research funding specifically, the same framework applies: look for named researchers, named institutions, and verifiable trial or publication records before committing a gift.

Hands preparing cancer research samples

Your donor checklist and ready-to-send email templates

Most donors skip the research because it feels complicated. It is not. Here is a prioritized checklist you can complete in stages, plus two email templates you can copy and send today.

The core checklist:

Look up the charity on Charity Navigator, CharityWatch, or Give.org (5 minutes)
Find and skim the most recent Form 990 on GuideStar or ProPublica (10–15 minutes)
Check program expense percentage (Part IX of the 990) and compare to prior years
Review board composition and conflict-of-interest policy (Part VI of the 990)
Confirm an audited financial statement is available for organizations above $750,000 in revenue
Read the charity’s most recent annual or impact report for outcome evidence
Verify the donation page uses HTTPS and the URL matches the official site

Time estimates:

Quick check: 15 minutes (Steps 1–2)
Moderate review: 1 hour (Steps 1–5)
Deep dive: 2+ hours (all steps plus direct contact)

Email template 1: Request for financials and Form 990

Subject: Request for Financial Documents

Hello,

I am considering a gift to [Organization Name] and would like to review your most recent Form 990 and audited financial statements before giving. Could you send those documents or point me to where they are posted on your website?

Thank you for your transparency and for the work you do.

Email template 2: Request for program evaluation or impact data

Subject: Question About Program Outcomes

Hello,

I am researching [Organization Name] as part of my giving decisions this year. Could you share any independent evaluations of your programs, outcome data from the past two years, or a description of how you measure the impact of your work?

I appreciate your time and look forward to learning more.

Why careful vetting matters to us, and to every donor

We believe that every dollar given in hope deserves to arrive somewhere worthy of that hope. At the HCRF, we have watched donors pour their hearts into causes they care about, and we have seen what happens when that trust is misplaced. The pain is real. The loss is real.

Hands holding glowing sphere symbolizing hope

That is why we hold ourselves to the same standards we ask you to apply to any organization you consider supporting. Our Form 990 is publicly available. Our institutional affiliation with the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University is verifiable. Our funded research is subject to scientific peer review. We publish funding reports because we believe you have every right to know where your generosity goes.

Careful vetting is not skepticism about generosity. It is the highest form of it. When you take the time to research before you give, you are not just protecting yourself. You are sending a signal to every nonprofit in your community that accountability matters, that transparency is expected, and that donors are paying attention.

We are grateful for every donor who holds us to that standard. You make us better.

HCRF: a transparent option for donors who care about cancer research

If you have worked through this guide and you are looking for a place to put your giving to work, we want you to know about the Hippocratic Cancer Research Foundation.

Hcrfwingstocure

HCRF is a 501©(3) nonprofit that funds “out of the box” cancer research at the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University, one of the nation’s NCI-designated comprehensive cancer centers. Our financials are publicly available, our IRS letter of determination is on file, and every funded project goes through scientific review before a dollar is committed. You can verify our tax-exempt status through the IRS search tool right now.

For donors who want to go deeper, we welcome questions about our funded research, our board, and our grant-making process. You can also explore workplace giving programs that let you multiply your impact through employer matching. If you are ready to give, visit Hcrfwingstocure to make a secure donation or sign up for research updates. Every gift, at every level, carries hope forward.

Sources

This article is general information, not a substitute for advice from a qualified financial advisor. Consult a qualified financial professional about your own circumstances before acting on anything here.

News