by Hank Sartin

In December, for the 13th year in a row, The Rotary Foundation received a four-star rating — the highest possible — from Charity Navigator, an independent evaluator of charities in the United States. Charity Navigator determines its ratings by examining how nonprofits use their funds, how sustainable their programs are, and how well they follow industry standards of transparency and accountability.

In a Matter of Measurement

In recent years, many nonprofits — including Rotary — have begun to increase their focus on measuring the impact of their work, and Charity Navigator has responded to that shift. In 2020, it acquired ImpactMatters, a rating organization dedicated to assessing the impact of nonprofits. Based on the existing ratings of ImpactMatters, Charity Navigator will create impact ratings for thousands of charities.

In an effort to measure the impact of Foundation grants and other Rotary projects, Rotary is now also emphasizing the importance of incorporating monitoring and evaluation into the projects that Rotary clubs and districts carry out in their own communities and around the world. But measuring impact can be challenging because there is no one-size-fits-all methodology. For some projects, large-scale surveys are useful. For others, the impact might be assessed using economic indicators. 

“What we are asking is this: Is this a good use of resources?” explains Elijah Goldberg, vice president of impact ratings at Charity Navigator. “Nonprofits are trying to solve a problem. The question is, is this particular type of activity efficient when you solve that problem?”