Helping donors give with confidence

What we do

One score, three trusted sources

Choosing a charity is hard. Evaluating one is even harder. GiveWell, Charity Navigator, and CharityWatch each spend enormous resources vetting thousands of organisations — but their ratings don't always agree, and most donors don't have time to compare all three.

Charity Ranking solves that by combining scores from all three evaluators into a single, transparent composite score. You get the benefit of expert analysis across multiple frameworks in one place.

Our data sources

Built on expert evaluation

Independence

No affiliations. No paid placements.

Why it matters

Your giving choices have real consequences

Each year, people around the world donate hundreds of billions of dollars to charitable causes. It is one of the most meaningful things a person can do with money. But research consistently shows that the difference in impact between the most and least effective organisations working on the same cause can be a factor of 100 or more — sometimes far greater.

A donation to a highly effective global health charity might provide a full course of malaria prevention for a child at risk for under $5. The same amount given to a poorly run organisation in the same cause area might achieve almost nothing. The generosity is identical. The outcome is not.

This is not a reason for cynicism — it is a reason for information. When donors have access to rigorous, independent evaluations, they can direct their generosity toward the organisations that make every dollar go furthest. Charity Ranking exists to make that access as simple as possible.

Our story

Built out of headlines — and a need to see for myself

Charity Ranking was started by one person, not a company. I'm Martinius Strømdal, and this site began with a feeling most donors know: I kept seeing news stories about charities that hadn't delivered what they promised, and I realised I had no easy way to check — for any given organisation — where the money actually went and how effective the work really was.

The information existed, but it was scattered. GiveWell published detailed cost-effectiveness analyses written for researchers. Charity Navigator issued four-star ratings based on financial metrics and governance. CharityWatch gave letter grades based on spending efficiency. All three do serious, valuable work — but none of it was built for a donor who simply wanted to know: can I trust this organisation with my money, and what will it actually accomplish?

Charity Ranking is my answer: one place that pulls the evaluators' work together, shows where each dollar goes, and says plainly what the evidence supports — so the next time a headline makes you doubt, you can check for yourself in minutes.

Data accuracy

Our commitment to getting it right

Every score on Charity Ranking is derived directly from ratings published by our three source organisations. We do not estimate, extrapolate, or adjust scores — if a charity is not covered by one of our sources, that gap is reflected in the composite rather than filled with assumptions. Transparency about what we know and what we don't is as important to us as the scores themselves.

We review and update all charity data at least annually, with interim corrections applied whenever we identify an error. Our scoring methodology is published in full on the How We Rank page, including a frank discussion of its limitations.

If you believe any score or piece of information on this site is inaccurate, please contact us — we investigate every report and will correct errors promptly.

How this site works

Our tools, our process — including the AI

We believe a ratings site should be as transparent about its own methods as it asks charities to be. So here is exactly how Charity Ranking operates: our scores start from the published research of independent evaluators, combined under the rubric described on How We Rank. To keep 80 organisations' data current, we use AI research tools to periodically re-review ratings — gathering recent evaluator reports and drafting proposed updates. Every AI-assisted review is checked and approved by our editor before publication, and every one is logged publicly on our ratings changelog, labeled as AI-assisted.

Impact estimates follow a strict rule: a cost-per-outcome number appears on this site only if the organisation itself publishes that figure. Where nothing is published, we describe what a donation supports without inventing a number. In July 2026 we audited every figure on the site against its source and published the corrections — the full account is in our Insights article. Editorial assessments and articles are human-written.

When we get something wrong, we say so: corrections are logged permanently on the changelog rather than quietly edited away.

Who runs this site

About the founder

Martinius Strømdal — founder and editor of Charity Ranking.

I'm a 26-year-old psychology student from Norway. I built Charity Ranking after one too many news stories about charities not fulfilling their promises — I wanted an easier way to see where the money goes, who delivers, and how effective they really are. I study how people think and decide, and I love efficiency; this site is my attempt to bring both to giving.

Get in touch

We want to hear from you

Whether you have a question about a specific charity, a correction to suggest, or just want to say hello — we are always glad to hear from visitors. Charity Ranking is a small, independent operation and every message is read.

You can reach us at [email protected] or use our contact page.