A CNBC Model to Guide Philanthropic Investments

If you\’re an inquisitive investor you probably turn on the television every once in a while to watch the stock performance of your favorite company. Green means good and red is bad. The color tells you something, but not everything. There is generally a story behind the movement of a stock. Maybe the earnings were just released and they beat market expectations. Maybe the CEO just announced she is unexpectedly \’leaving\’ next week. With no replacement. 

One of the nightmare scenarios for a donor is making a sizable donation to a charity only to find out a a few weeks later, via the local news, that the CEO of said charity was embezzling funds and was dismissed by his board last week. Putting aside the criminality and the unethical nature of such a crime, it can be frustrating for a donor who just wants to have an impact to feel like they threw money out the window on a donation to their favorite cause.  

How can we obtain real-time insights into a nonprofit? How can know that this nonprofit is on the receiving end of other donations? How can we know that the donation is safe? 

Imagine if we had a similar dashboard or colored indicator for nonprofits. We could score the performance on a nonprofit based on their program performance, operations, governance and a variety of other factors (for example: a non-profit changes their mission from helping animals in Brazil to promoting clean water in Namibia).  

How would we obtain the data? Obviously to do this we would need access to data in real-time. We\’re probably a bit far out from that point but systems are moving toward real-time insights on the non-profit sector.  

Let\’s look at Amazon as a possible example. Donations through Amazon Smile surpassed $215 million since the inception of the concept in 2013. THese donations through Amazon Smile take place in real-time. According to their Super Bowl commercial(s), Amazon can tell us the likelihood of a receiver catching a touchdown pass. Why can\’t they tell us the amount or flow of charitable investment toward a given organization? Marked increases or decreases to an organization could tell provide a great deal of data for the charitable donor. If they \’big money,\’ in this case the large foundations or large philanthropist put the brakes on giving to an organization or cause wouldn\’t you want to know? 

We need to create a data system that is connected across mediums; from social media, websites, IRS forms, foundation databases, etc. that aggregates where and to whom charitable investments are going. Donors and potential donors should not have to visit 8-10 website and pay to have access to IRS forms in order to be an educated and informed donor.