Charity Navigator

Dear Mr. Murphy, I’m sorry to learn that you’ve had a frustrating experience with the Good Card. As you may know, at Charity Navigator we rate the financial health and accountability & transparency of nearly 6,000 charities (for free) to help donors make informed giving decisions. I understand your concern with the Good Card expiration date, but this is not a program of Charity Navigator, but rather Network for Good. We simply post a link to their charitable gift cards for those that are interested in that type of giving opportunity. I recommend that you contact Network for Good directly for assistance. They will be better equipped to address your concerns regarding their Good Cards: http://www.networkforgood.org/about/contact.aspx. I hope that I’ve been able to clarify that the Good Card isn't a product of Charity Navigator. We'd greatly appreciate you reconsidering your review of our organization since your complaint wasn't with our free, trusted and objective rating service. Sincerely, ~Charity Navigator Staff

Dear Linda Bacci, First, we want to thank you for your interest in our work, for using our site and for sharing it with your friends. More importantly, we commend your commitment to responsible and informed giving! Second, we apologize that you were unable to compare charities to one another. There are several ways to compare charities on our site which is explained here: http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=content.view&cpid=484#6. We also demonstrated this function in a recent webinar. You can view that here: http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=content.view&cpid=1372 (go to 7 minutes and 30 seconds and also 12 minutes into the discussion to see the parts about comparing charities.) Third, we’d be happy to answer your questions about how to ‘move’ a charity if you could contact us to clarify what you are experiencing. You can reach us here: http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=content.view&cpid=459. Finally, please know that at Charity Navigator we are committed to continuous improvement (it is one of our core values: http://www.kenscommentary.org/2008/08/core-values-are-not-just-sign-on-wall.html). So, we value feedback such as yours as it helps us improve our service and make our site more user-friendly. Best wishes in all your charitable endeavors. Charity Navigator

Dear Kevin Kauffman, Thank you for your interest in Charity Navigator and for your kind words about our service! We also appreciate you taking the time to share your constructive criticism about the donation experience. We 100% agree with your concerns. And we are working with Network For Good to implement their API so that the user experience will be much improved. Once that integration is completed, the process will require just one login on our site and it will appear to be a more seamless transaction (rather than a hand-off as it stands now). We’re working to have that up and running by the end of 2012. So, stay tuned! Best wishes in all your charitable endeavors, Charity Navigator

Dear Paul Sundmark, Thank you so much for taking the time to share your concerns with the functionality of the GreatNonprofits’ write a review tool on our site. We are very sorry that you didn’t have a completely user-friendly experience when attempting to write a review. Please understand that another organization, GreatNonprofits, runs the review tool which appears on many different websites, one of them being Charity Navigator. And, you should know that the review data does not have any impact on our star ratings. We simply provide the reviews for interested donors who want to read about other people’s experiences with different charities. We have recently become aware that a few individuals, such as you, have had problems publishing their reviews. You should know that there is nothing sinister going on here- no one is trying to block anyone’s feedback! In fact, the opposite is true. We do everything we can to encourage all different types of stakeholders to contribute their feedback. Since becoming aware of the log in problems, we have consulted with GreatNonprofits’ technology folks. I’m pleased to tell you that we’ve found a resolution to the problem. Both teams are working diligently and we expect to have a fix in place within a few days. Again, we do apologize for the inconvenience and I hope you will continue to use Charity Navigator’s free site to make informed giving choices. Sincerely, Charity Navigator Staff

Dear Jack234, Thank you for your interest in informed giving and for taking the time to write a review of Charity Navigator’s free charity rating service. One of our core values is continuous improvement and feedback from our users is integral to that process. At Charity Navigator, we’ve gone to great lengths to develop an unbiased, objective and transparent rating system that can be used to evaluate the Financial Health and Accountability & Transparency of thousands of charities. We obtain much of the data we use to rate each charity from the Form 990 (annual informational tax return). The Form 990 is completed after an outside auditor has reviewed the charity’s financial performance. The charity’s Board reviews the Form 990 before it is filed and the charity’s top executive signs off on it indicating that the data within the document is factual. The document is then submitted to the IRS (federal charity regulatory office) and also to each and every state charity regulatory office in which the charity solicits donations. We tell you all of that because if you are aware that a charity has mischaracterized their financial position on the Form 990, then you should immediately notify the regulatory agencies that have the power to investigate and prosecute criminal activities (if there have been any). However, we respectfully submit that this might be simply a case of misunderstanding. As the link you shared to BusinessWeek indicates, the Catholic Church is made up of many, many different parts. We only rate a few of its 501 c 3 public charities that are required to file the Form 990. Specifically, we rate 18 Catholic Charities (http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?keyword_list=catholic+charities&nameonly=1&Submit2=GO&bay=search.results&sortby=rtg) and their ratings range from 2-stars (needs improvement) to 4-stars. Obviously, this does not show the complete picture of the Catholic Church as ‘houses of worship’ (including the Salvation Army) are exempt from filing the Form 990. So, while a few of Catholic Charities we rate do not receive money from the government, doesn’t mean that other parts of the Catholic Church do not. In fact, only 5 (http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?keyword_list=catholic+charities&bay=search.results&EIN=&cgid=&cuid=&location=2&stid=&city=&overallrtg=&size=&ceosalary=&scopeid=&gvt=1&Submit=Submit) of the 18 Catholic Charities we rate report no government support. So, in fact, most of the Catholic Charities we rate DO receive government support. We hope that we’ve been able to address your concerns and that we’ve been able to clear up any misinterpretation of our data/ rating system. We thank you for your obvious commitment to responsible and informed giving and wish you all the best in your charitable endeavors!