Charity Navigator
An independent nonprofit evaluator that rates charities based on financial health, accountability, and transparency.
Charity Navigator is a term from U.S. nonprofit financial reporting — typically a line item or schedule on IRS Form 990, the annual disclosure tax-exempt organizations file. The definition here is the IRS-file usage, which can differ from how the term is used in general financial writing or accounting standards. On the LakeQuality nonprofit efficiency rubric, Charity Navigator feeds into one of the four scoring factors (program ratio, revenue growth, reserves, or CEO compensation). Understanding how the term is computed at IRS is part of reading nonprofit pages defensibly.
Each nonprofit page on the site surfaces the specific Charity Navigator value for that organization (when Form 990 reports one), so the general definition here translates into a concrete data point on the per-nonprofit pages you actually use.
Charity Navigator is the largest and most widely referenced independent charity evaluator in the United States, providing free ratings for over 200,000 nonprofits. Founded in 2001, Charity Navigator rates organizations on a four-star system based on two broad dimensions: financial health (including program expenses, administrative expenses, fundraising expenses, and revenue growth) and accountability/transparency (including governance practices, donor privacy policies, and financial reporting). In recent years, Charity Navigator has expanded its methodology to include "impact and results" assessments, moving beyond purely financial metrics. The platform draws its financial data from IRS Form 990 filings and supplementary information provided by rated organizations. Charity Navigator has been both praised for increasing transparency in the nonprofit sector and criticized for overemphasizing financial ratios, which can incentivize organizations to manipulate expense classifications or underinvest in infrastructure. The "overhead myth" critique, articulated in a joint letter by Charity Navigator, GuideStar, and the BBB Wise Giving Alliance in 2013, acknowledged that overhead ratios alone are insufficient measures of nonprofit effectiveness. NonprofitTruth offers a complementary perspective through its Efficiency Score, which balances financial ratios with revenue sustainability and reserve health, providing donors with another data point for charitable decision-making.