Nonprofit Rating Site Seeks LGBT Agencies

When GreatNonprofits, a Bay Area-based website that rates charitable organizations, released its list of the top-rated LGBTQ charities for 2016, just five agencies made the cut. And only one was based on the West Coast, Seattle's Free2Luv.

A check of the 8-year-old website's past annual winners found that just three LGBTQ agencies in California had ever been included on the top-rated list. The lone Bay Area agency, the Gay Straight Alliance Network (now the Genders and Sexualities Alliance Network) in San Francisco, made the 2012 list, while two Los Angeles County agencies, the Trevor Project and the Los Angeles LGBT Center, were included in 2009.

The website does list scores of LGBTQ nonprofits across the country, but very few have the top-rated status.

The website has honored more AIDS agencies based in the Golden State, naming 11 as top-rated over the years. The Shanti Project and Project Open Hand, both in San Francisco, have made the list, as has the Oakland-based Internet Sexuality Information Services, which is now known as YTH, short for youth, tech and health.

The lack of local LGBTQ agencies rated best by GreatNonprofits, however, could give potential donors a false impression, said Roger Doughty, president of the Horizons Foundation, which is focused on LGBT charitable giving.

"If their impression is there are no great LGBTQ nonprofits in the Bay Area or California that would be deeply unfortunate and deeply inaccurate," Doughty told the Bay Area Reporter when asked about the website. "There are scores and scores of organizations that work like crazy and make enormous contributions to the community and to the movement. To suggest there are none in California that merits being well-rated is ludicrous."

What the website's annual lists do signal, said Doughty, is that "for whatever reasons GreatNonprofits has not made a lot of inroads into the LGBTQ community of nonprofits."

In an interview with the B.A.R. Perla Ni, the website's CEO, acknowledged as much, saying she hopes to see more LGBTQ agencies participate in 2017. She has spoken to Doughty on how to get more local nonprofits involved.

"We want to get the word out to Bay Area-based organizations better," said Ni, who suggested their lack of participation this year many have been due to being more focused on the presidential election.

To be named one of GreatNonprofits' top-rated LGBTQ charities in a given year, agencies have a rather low threshold they need to meet. They must generate, at minimum, 10 positive experiences, or "stories" as the website calls them, from clients, donors, or volunteers between January 1 and October 31 to be included in the annual top-rated list, which numbered more than 1,600 across all categories for 2016.

"Our methodology is really community-sourced nominations," explained Ni. "We invite nonprofits and their community to participate."

Hearing directly from those assisted by, or working with, the nonprofits can give donors and others better insight into the effectiveness of the agencies, argued Ni. It is a different way of evaluating a charity, she said, than the more financially focused methods used by other nonprofit rating agencies, such as Charity Navigator.

"It only tells you the cost of things and nothing about the agency's actual benefit to the local community. It is such a perverse way to look at things," she said. "People are much more interested in looking at the impact of a nonprofit than the overhead."

While donors should take into account how much a charity's leader is paid, Ni said they should also look at other measures when evaluating where to donate their money. And she pointed out that those who have had negative experiences with a nonprofit can share their stories via GreatNonprofits.

"I think how clients are served is the most important part you want to hear from," said Ni.

For more information, visit http://www.greatnonprofits.org