Watchdog Groups Express Concern About Growing Number of Charities

The growing number of charities is making charity-watchdog groups skeptical, The New York Times reports.

The number of charities now exceeds 1 million, according to the Internal Revenue Service.

“New organizations aren’t checking to see how their causes are fitting into the world as a whole,” Trent Stamp, founder of Charity Navigator, told the newspaper. “But in doing good, there’s always a lot of self-involvement, I guess.”

Daniel Borochoff, president of the American Institute of Philanthropy, a Chicago organization that rates the performance of charitable groups, says the proliferation of charities has caused an increase in the number of organizations suing each other over similar names.

In addition, he expresses concern about whether some charities are doing a good job using donations.

Almost half of the organizations working to fight cancer are doing a very poor job of making sure overhead costs don’t go overboard, according to the institute.

“We’ve got 700 breast-cancer-related organizations in this country,” Mr. Stamp said. “If there were less, there might be more money for a cure.”

See The Chronicle of Philanthropy’s special report on the explosion in the number of charities.

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