What is Charity Navigator, as seen on ‘Telemarketers?’

The Telemarketers docuseries on HBO has been an eye-opening exposé about the nature of the so-called fundraising industry with two former employees of the profession at its center. Pat Pespas and Sam Lipman-Stern are two former employees of Civic Development Group, a now-notorious telemarketing firm that promoted a hard-partying work culture in the 2000s, as illuminated in the series. The pals soon joined forces to become CDG whistle-blowers to expose the practices they saw as fraudulent.

Over the course of Lipman-Stern and Pespas’ multi-decade documentary journey, they met with and interviewed various watchdog groups throughout the course of the show, including Charity Navigator.

What is Charity Navigator?

In Telemarketers, Pat Pespas interviews Charity Navigator’s then-CEO Ken Berger to discuss organizations like CDG, who routinely claimed to be raising money for charitable causes like the Fraternal Order of Police but actually kept 90 percent of the donations. As Berger alluded to in the interview, Charity Navigator examines non-profit organizations for the sake of public transparency.

According to Charity Navigator’s website, they’ve been active since 2001 and have since rated nearly 200,000 charities. As their About Us page explained:

“[O]ur comprehensive ratings shine a light on the cost-effectiveness and overall health of a charity’s programs, including measures of stability, efficiency, and sustainability. The metrics inform donors of not just where their dollars are going but what their dollars are doing.”

Charity Navigator is also a 501(c)(3) non-profit itself, just like the organizations it evaluates. Furthermore, the website states they don’t charge charities to rate them in order to ensure they are unbiased, but rely on donations from the public.

Over the years, the organization has enjoyed its fair share of praise as well as implementing self-imposed avenues of improvement for its methodology. For instance, Charity Navigator was named in Time Magazine’s 50 Coolest Websites list for 2006, according to an archived post. Over the years, Charity Navigator has undergone a number of revamps to how it evaluates non-profits, with the latest being the Encompass Rating System implemented in 2020. This system is based on “charity performance across four key domains,” including impact and results, accountability and finance, culture and community, and leadership and adaptability.