How do I choose a charity to support?

More than 80% of Canadians and Americans gave over $500 Billion to charities in 2019. This crazy budget is more than the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of most of the countries, including New Zealand, Greece, Romania and Qatar.

Of course, this is is something we can be proud of. It means most of our communities care about others. They not only care about their families, friends, and neighbours; they also care about people in other cities and even other countries. Research shows that 31% of the donors give outside of their country of residence (nonprofitssource.com).

However, deciding which charity to support is still a challenge. There are more than 10 million charities and nonprofit organizations all around the world. In Canada, we have +80K charities and +180 nonprofits; we can donate or volunteer. In the US number of American nonprofits exceeds 1.1 million.

It is almost impossible for us to know all these charities and their causes. If this is the case, how do we choose a charity to support either as a donor or volunteer?

Social Return of Investment and Impact

Unfortunately, there is no algorithm or methodology to choose the best charity for you. Some people look at the percentages of administrative costs and prefer to support charities with less operational expenses. Spending less than 10-15 cents for administration and spending rest for direct services sounds like a trustable statistics for people.

Some others are more skeptical. They want to see the Social Return of Investment (SROI), which is simply the dollar value social impact.

Our researchers at Vectors Group measure the impact of charitable services directly at three dimensions: The individual-level impact, the community-level impact and the target-group-level impact.

No matter which method you use, it is still a challenge to find the best charity to support. However, we don’t need to worry about it because they are all good. It is safe to say it doesn’t matter which charity you support. I know you were expecting a different answer, maybe a rule of thumb you can use everywhere and anytime.

Nonprofit Ecosystem

Let me explain why it not that important which charity you choose. Of course, I am talking about local, national, multinational and international charities that have sincere philanthropic services. Unfortunately, there are some which have secret agendas and non-humanistic objectives.

Consider the charitable sector as a big forest with various kinds of trees and plants. Some of them are bigger than others, but they are all – maybe not equally but still – essential for the ecological system of the forest. They all will support the common cause.

For charities, the common cause is to make our world a better place. They are all great organizations operated by amazing people.

Let’s go back to our original question: How do I choose a charity to support? Use your hearth, not only your brain.

Omer Livvarcin is the co-author of the book “Risk Management for Non-Profits,” published by Business Experts Press. Omer is also the founder of Charify.ca and Vectors Group.