Founded in 2001, Charity Navigator is the nation’s largest and most-utilized evaluator of charities. To help donors decide which non-profits are worthy of support, their team of professional analysts examines tens of thousands of non-profit financial documents. They use this knowledge to develop an unbiased, objective, numbers-based rating system to assess over 9,000 of America’s best-known – and some lesser known, but worthy – charities.
Specifically, Charity Navigator’s rating system examines two broad areas of a charity’s performance: their Financial Health and their Accountability & Transparency. Their ratings show givers how efficiently they believe a charity will use its support today, how well it has sustained its programs and services over time, and its level of commitment to good governance, best practices and openness with information.
The IWMF has achieved a Charity Navigator overall score of 94.58 on a scale 100, and a 100 rating on accountability and transparency. That puts us in some pretty exclusive company.
So, how did we get this rating? Well, they initially rated us lower primarily because our financial statements didn’t have a salary level for our CEO. As you all know, volunteers primarily run the IWMF. Jennifer Silva from the IWMF Office called Charity Navigator and explained that the IWMF President is an unpaid volunteer, and provided them with some additional information they were lacking. In response, Charity Navigator re-looked at us and upgraded our rating!
In response to our new rating, Carl Harrington, IWMF’s volunteer President, had this to say: “The IWMF is proud to receive Charity Navigator’s highest (4-star) rating, and is proud of its 100% rating on accountability and transparency. You can think of this rating like a restaurant review or a movie review, where such a maximum-star rating means this is a movie or a restaurant well worth going to. That same thinking applies here when it comes to where to give.”
Carl continued on to say, “This outside confirmation of what we’re doing is a strong signal to everyone that donating to the IWMF is a good investment. I hope this news encourages you to give even more generously as you make your next gift and future gifts to the IWMF. Rest assured, we’ll put it to good use!”
For more information about our 4-star rating, click here(link is external) (link is external).
