By Jim Felich February 19, 2016 |
Website critique of: |
This is a critique of the Charity Navigator website.
The purpose of the site is stated in their Mission statement:
Charity Navigator works to guide intelligent giving. By guiding intelligent giving, we aim to advance a more efficient and responsive philanthropic marketplace, in which givers and the charities they support work in tandem to overcome our nation’s and the world’s most persistent challenges. Charity Navigator is a 501 (c) (3) non-profit organization under the Internal Revenue Code and does not accept any contributions from any charities we evaluate.
Website qualities being considered are:
Visual Appeal
The initial impact of the home page is subdued, perhaps to give a sense of formality. The color scheme is primarily light blues with black body text. The first area one's eye is drawn to is the Link banner, which I do not feel is the main goal of the page.
Information Design
A left side column of Top Ten Lists gives an unordered list of various sorting options of the charity names. Clicking one of the options produces an inset in the home page as shown on the right. The heading expands the title of the selected option, followed by a detailed description of the option. Below the description is an ordered list of those charities in the top ten places determined by the selected sort criteria. Clicking one of the ten charity names listed replaces the inset with a tabbed form showing its current rating, Programs, History, IRS forms, and Comments. Comments can be posted by anyone.
Navigation
Site navigation is straight forward. My only issue is that once one has drilled down to a particular charity and clicked through the tabs there is no obvious link back to the original Top Ten list. One is faced with backing all the way out to the Top Ten list.
Content
The content appears to be a significant number of charities each of which has been rated on Financial Performance Metrics against Accountability and Transparency Metrics as seen in the image on the right.
All of the criteria for each metric is defined in detail. I judge that considerable effort has been expended to produce valuable information from various data sources.
Because Comments can be entered without the requirement of logging in, that aspect of the content is open to abuse.
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Copyright 2016 James C. Felich.
