Nonprofit due diligence: an 11-step checklist for vetting any charity
The same checklist used by grantmaking foundations, donor-advised fund administrators, corporate giving teams, and financial advisors to vet any charity before disbursing funds. It works for 7.9 million+ nonprofits across 100+ countries: verify registration, confirm tax status, review the financials and governance, and check the red flags, in order.
The 11-step due diligence checklist
Verify legal registration
Confirm the charity is registered with its country's official regulator: IRS BMF (US), Charity Commission for England and Wales (UK), ACNC (Australia), CRA T3010 (Canada), or equivalent. Look up the registration number on the regulator's public register. A charity that cannot be found in its own country's official register is a hard stop.
Confirm tax-exempt status
For US charities, verify 501(c)(3) status via IRS EIN lookup and check current good standing. For other jurisdictions, confirm the charity has not been suspended, deregistered, or revoked. Some countries publish a separate tax-deductible donor register (UK Gift Aid, Australia DGR, Netherlands ANBI) that is narrower than the basic charity register.
Review three years of financials
Get the last three years of audited financials. Check the revenue trend, program spend ratio, admin ratio, fundraising ratio, and changes in net assets. Three years smooths out one-year noise (capital campaigns, legal expenses, year-end donor surges). For US charities this is Form 990; for the UK, the annual return; for Australia, the AIS.
Check the integrity assessment
GiveRadar's integrity assessment (0-100) combines registration, financial transparency, governance, contact availability, and data recency, minus red-flag penalties, into a single score. Anything under 50 deserves a closer look; 80+ usually indicates a well-documented, transparent organization.
Review board governance
Check board composition: size (3 to 25 typical), independence (majority non-staff), term limits, recent turnover, and conflict-of-interest disclosures. Frequent or contested resignations are a flag. The Form 990 Schedule O and the annual report often disclose governance changes.
Check executive compensation
Read top officer and key-employee compensation in the context of revenue and sector. Reasonable benchmarks: $100K to $200K for charities under $5M revenue; $200K to $500K for $5M to $50M; $500K to $1.5M for $50M+ at large national or international charities. Outliers warrant a Form 990 Schedule J read.
Read recent news coverage
Search the charity's name in GDELT and Google News for the past 24 months. Look for fraud allegations, lawsuits, regulatory action, executive misconduct, or governance breakdown. GiveRadar surfaces this on each charity profile under the news tab with tone scoring.
Verify website and contact
A healthy charity has an active website with current contact info, recent news, a donation page, annual report PDFs, and named staff. A dead website, missing contact, or no publicly visible annual report are quality signals (not necessarily fatal).
Check third-party assessments
Cross-reference with Charity Navigator (US), the Candid seal level, BBB Wise Giving Alliance accreditation, GiveWell evaluations (effective-altruism focus), or local equivalents. Multiple consistent signals strengthen the picture; conflicts deserve investigation.
Request original filings if needed
For high-value grants, request the most recent Form 990 (US), CRA T3010 (Canada), ACNC AIS (Australia), or equivalent directly from the charity. Compare it against what regulators publish: inconsistencies are a flag.
Document the diligence trail
Save the diligence record: a registration verification screenshot, financial review notes, the integrity score and its components, a news search summary, and any concerns flagged. This is useful for grant-committee documentation and your own records.
Streamlined version (5 to 10 minutes)
For lower-value or routine grants, the streamlined check covers the same critical signals in a fraction of the time.
- Look up the charity on GiveRadar (or via the API).
- Verify the registration number on the official regulator's public register (one click from the GiveRadar profile).
- Check the integrity assessment: aim for 70+ for routine grants, 80+ for high-value.
- Skim recent news for red-flag events (auto-aggregated under the news tab).
- Document the check date and integrity assessment for the compliance record.
Frequently asked questions
What is nonprofit due diligence?
How long does proper due diligence take?
Do I need to do this for every charity I support?
What is a red flag vs a hard stop?
How do I do due diligence on international charities?
Can I automate the due diligence process?
Related: charity fraud guide, charity checker tool, methodology, for grantmakers, API docs.
