CHARITY NAVIGATOR GIVES THE ROTARY FOUNDATION TOP RATING

Charity Navigator was founded in 2001 under the simple premise that people are amazingly generous and enjoy helping others but are not always sure how to go about it. The founders of Charity Navigator saw the US government cut back on community support programs, and in response, charities and non-profits stepped in to fill the void. As a result, nearly one million charities in the United States were providing essential services to needy people.

Because of charities, wetlands were preserved, many homeless had shelter, hungry children were fed, diseases were being cured, and more animals were safe. The United States was a better place because of charities, but it was getting harder to determine which charities were which.

The founders of Charity Navigator knew that the United States needed charities, and they also knew that most of them were well intentioned and well managed. But even as insiders in the charitable world, they had a difficult time determining which charities were the most effective and which deserved support.

The charitable marketplace had simply become too large to navigate without some help. The Charity Navigator founders were concerned that people who were less knowledgeable about the charitable sector would simply not give to organizations out of fear that they could not be positive those organizations were trustworthy.

Even the most cynical of observers would admit that the number of genuinely dishonest charities in the United States was infinitesimally small. But at the same time it was understood that the misdoings of a few stained the entire charitable sector, gathered disproportionate attention in the media, and scared away potential givers. The perception of wrongdoing in the charitable sector, while very different from the reality, gave people an excuse not to support any charities.

The founders of Charity Navigator believed that by offering unbiased, trusted, analytical information about charities, more people would support non-profits or feel better about making a gift to an organization.

Looking at the options available to givers, the founders of Charity Navigator were left with only one choice. They thought that America's generous citizens deserved a service that would deliver unbiased ratings of a huge number of charities, and do it for free. So they stepped up and created Charity Navigator, the online source which would provide unbiased, trusted and analytical information on charities.

They ultimately created an objective data-driven organization, with no biases, that rates more charities than any other evaluator, thus ensuring that givers from every state in the nation, with every type of charitable interest, could find a well-rated charity to support. Today, the number of charities they evaluate has grown to over five thousand and the service is free, not only for the charities involved, but for the user.

Charity Navigator has awarded The Rotary Foundation its top rating of four stars.

“Less than a quarter of the charities we evaluate have received our highest rating, indicating that The Rotary Foundation of Rotary International outperforms the majority of nonprofits in America with respect to fiscal responsibility,” says Trent Stamp, executive director of Charity Navigator, in the letter announcing the four-star rating of Rotary International.

A four-star rating indicates an exceptional financial performance; a three-star rating signifies a good financial performance; a two-star indicates a need for improvement; and a one-star denotes a poor performance. A rated organization not awarded any stars is considered exceptionally poor.

An organization’s overall rating stems from its overall score from seven performance categories. For each category, an organization can receive a score from 0 to 10. The overall score of a four-star charity ranges from 60 to 70. An organization is awarded no stars if its overall score is less than 25. The Rotary Foundation received an overall score of 60.92.

Learn more about the ratings at www.charitynavigator.org