GuideStar Unveils New Tool to Share How Charities Measure Results

GuideStar unveiled on Wednesday a free feature to recognize nonprofits that share measures of their effectiveness and outcomes.

GuideStar Platinum, a new seal that appears on some charities’ profiles and represents the highest level of transparency, is intended to help the nonprofit world move beyond judging a charity primarily by its spending.

“We wanted to create something that really recognizes organizations that do track their programs and results,” said Eva Nico, GuideStar’s senior director of nonprofit strategy.

To earn the Platinum designation, charities must share with GuideStar at least one measure of program success and one year of data but can share up to 20 measures and multiple years of results. Along with groups like Charity Navigator, Independent Sector, and BBB Wise Giving Alliance, GuideStar has been active in the “overhead myth” campaign, pushing for people to pay more attention to charities’ measures of progress rather than simply how much they are spending on fundraising and administrative costs compared to other expenses.

“You can’t just tell people not to look at the financial ratios,” Ms. Nico said. “You have to actually give them something else to look at.”

Helping Nonprofits Grow

In January, GuideStar gave its profiles a refresh that included space for charities to answer questions about their goals and accomplishments.

And with Platinum’s launch, GuideStar has compiled a list of 700 measures currently used by different kinds of charities and is providing this list of options in a document called the Common Results Catalogue. Nonprofits can add other measures they use as well as notes with additional context for more depth or to explain why there may be spikes or dips. On GuideStar’s website, the data that leads to a Platinum designation can be found under the red “programs and results” tab on each charity’s page.

More than 900 charities got a preview of the new tool, giving them a head start in considering what measures they would like to share. About 150 groups have completed the process and have the Platinum seal starting today.

Charities must already have GuideStar’s “Gold” seal of transparency — meaning that they’ve provided qualitative information about their charity’s impact — to get the Platinum ribbon.

“Having this information publicly available is something that’s unique for the sector,” said Ms. Nico. “This information is typically behind closed doors,” used for internal purposes or shared with grant makers but not with individual donors.

GuideStar has hopes Platinum will be widely adopted and used by donors to evaluate charities,

Said Ms. Nico, “We believe this can really help the sector grow and learn from the actual metrics that people use.”