I just had a very nice meeting with the George McCully and his team over at the Catalog for Philanthropy. Catalogue is a great effort, started in Massachusetts (where they are well-known) but with a desire to be more of a national effort. This is the 11th year for the Catalogue and they have profiled over 900 charities in that time. The result is a very nice printed “catalogue” that gets sent to the top 120,000 households in Massachusetts.
Their core screening qualification is fairly simple. First, your organization must be some form of public benefit that impacts the quality of life in a philanthropic or charitable way. There are over 36,000 nonprofits in Massachusetts, but George only counts 3,000 or so organizations in his “target.” Gone from the list are churches, clubs, dues-paying associations, business groups, sports leagues and other organizations that primarily benefit a specific community. The Catalogue is making no judgment on the value of supporting or joining these organizations, but they don’t meet the test of providing a broad-based public benefit.
If the Massachusetts experience holds nationally, then the “1.4 million registered IRS charities” may be narrowed down to less than 140,000 “Catalogue-worthy” organizations. George also culls organizations that are above $3m in annual revenues, which actually doesn’t impact the number of organizations all that much since most are well under $3m (in the U.S., only 35,000 or so 501c3 organizations exceed $3m revenue out of 1.4m total nonprofits).
So, when people throw around the “1.4 million IRS nonprofits” number, it may be accurate, but it’s not reflective of the real situation. Perhaps at some point Givvy and the Catalogue for Philanthropy can work on creating more of a breakdown that makes it easier for people to find the great local charities that are so easily overlooked when we pull out our checkbooks…
October 10, 2008 at 10:00 am |
The Catalogue looks like it is performing a great service. I do wonder about their filters. Why filter by revenue size? Doesn’t the size of an organization and the amount of money it receives from the charitable public indicate that there is great demand for its beneficial services or that the cause it is devoted to impacts a great number of people?
I would also filter by effectiveness, although this entails more work and more expense. Wouldn’t the Catalogue’s users appreciate the ability to see if an organization effectively uses donations on addressing a stated cause rather than a large overhead of management and frivolous spending?
October 10, 2008 at 10:25 am |
Those are both great questions which you should direct to them. I would say, however, that one of the biggest needs out there is to help highlight younger or smaller organizations doing great work. Nonprofits under $3m don’t have large marketing and outreach budgets, so it’s a bit of a catch 22. They could be doing great work, but nobody knows about it. Remember as I mention above, this filter only cuts out a small number of charities in the scheme of things – about 2.5% – and the ones cut out get a lot more attention already.
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