Donors Are Settling for a 'Bronze Standard' for Measuring Charities

Sometimes even the best donors give money to bad organizations, Jacob Harold, a program officer at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, told a meeting Monday of nonprofit officials held at New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service.

In some cases, Harold says, these donors focus on the wrong type of information when making decisions about their giving, often looking only at organizations’ overhead and not at whether they are effective in fulfilling their missions.