Before you write those Giving Tuesday (or any more post-election) checks

Dear Turkey-Coma’d-Post-Election America:

Was your finger just on a nonprofit’s “donate now” button before getting distracted by this post? Awesome. Helping out amazing nonprofits is a fantastic way to drive positive change in populations that need it most. But please continue to pause for one sec and hear me out. Because for many reasons, I’m feeling pretty fired up right now to do all I can to make sure our collective funding is making as many lives as better as possible, as there’s a lot of gobbledygook out there that makes doing so difficult.

The whole reason I do what I do (help empower smaller nonprofits and social enterprises with data and metrics) is that there are too many organizations who are not equipped with tools and systems to know if what they’re doing makes a real impact…and to thereby show whether or not our donations are driving that impact.

And then there are the big nonprofits. I know a lot of us have been looking to those, particularly in the wake of the election. Here’s the thing with these big guys. Some are awesome and do really baller things at scale. Others are, as far as I’m concerned, really fancy PR campaigns that don’t do much else. Even if everyone on your Facebook newsfeed is giving to one or two particular organizations, do you know if contributions there are going to help support actual impactful programming?

No? So what do we do?

1. Before donating, look up any nonprofit on charitynavigator.org or guidestar.org, which are basically watchdog sites for the sector. They have comprehensive ratings and reports where you can check the efficacy of these nonprofits themselves; most smaller nonprofits are on there too. And if you want to get really nitty gritty you can download the charity’s 990s, their annual IRS tax filing forms that are public documents and also list executive compensation; while I’m all for equitable pay in the impact space, I don’t see the need for any executive salaries that are closer to $1M than they are to the compensation that most other employees within the organization make. I’m well aware of these watchdogs once-upon-a-time judging nonprofits for spending a lot on overhead. This is no longer a practice on there, and should not be a practice with you. Nonprofits need overhead to operate, and they need salaries to operate. Don’t worry about ratios of money spent on programming:other. Worry about whether or not nonprofits can articulate what impact their programming actually does and how operations support that!
2. Consider public radio (ok, this is my semi personal plug as I am one of the many Americans right now who grew up in rural parts of our country and are thinking about our hometowns a lot). Not National Public Radio, but the smaller stations that are often the only radio news source in rural America. I learned this from going to a recent live taping of Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me: These stations are heavily funded by the government grants, which have been on the chopping block for some time and may not survive come January. If those grants go away, rural public radio stations may go away. So even if you don’t live there but are concerned about the echo chambers that are being built across our country right now, consider finding a public radio station in a rural area and helping it stay afloat. It provides an invaluable non-partisan service for their entire community.
3. If you really want to give to a local nonprofit not listed on the watchdog sites, but you still want to know how your money is going to be spent, ask them! Call them up. Email their Executive Director. They should have their budget well thought-through and the impact associated with each big bucket there articulated, even if it’s not on their website. Don’t be crazy — these folks know about what they do better than you do and you need to trust them to some extent — but if you can’t get any answers at all or sense you’re being a huge pain in the butt asking for this info, I’d think twice.
4. Call me. I’m seriously happy to help, especially if you’re looking to donate a substantial amount philanthropically. While I won’t be the best at recommending certain nonprofits for various causes, I can definitely help dig into the efficacy of particular nonprofit you’ve got your eye on.

Happy Giving Tuesday y’all!

XO,

Hannah

P.S. Once you find a totally kick-ass nonprofit to give to, please remember that most big companies match charitable donations of their employees, especially now during the holiday season. It’d be a shame to leave that money on the table.

Hannah Gay is a designer, coach, and advisor for nonprofits and social enterprises and the founder of malinaSI Social Impact Design.