Frequently asked questions

A free charity intelligence platform that aggregates data from official government registries across 65+ countries. We help donors, journalists, researchers and grantmakers verify nonprofits and assess their integrity before donating or partnering.

Yes. The web search and every charity profile are free with no account required. A paid Pro tier ($99/month) exists for the REST API with higher rate limits, but you do not need an account to look up any charity.

From API subscriptions ($99/month Pro, custom Enterprise) and bulk data licensing. We do not run ads, we do not take a cut of donations, and we never charge charities to be listed or to boost their score.

Official government and tax-authority registers - IRS Form 990 (US), Charity Commission (UK), CRA (Canada), ACNC (Australia), ANBI (Netherlands), and 60+ similar national regulators. Provenance is tracked per field; click any data point in a profile to see its source.

Continuously. New filings are imported as registries publish them - typically annually for financials, more frequently for registration status and contact details. Each profile shows when each field was last refreshed.

We currently cover 65+ countries; the rest are either jurisdictions without a public charity register, or imports we have not built yet. Many African and Asian countries are on our roadmap as we build country-specific scrapers. Email us if your jurisdiction is missing - it helps us prioritize.

We aim for very high accuracy because every field comes from an official source. We do make mistakes - parser bugs, name-matching errors across registries, stale data when a charity changes faster than its regulator updates. Click any field to see the source, and report errors at [email protected].

A 0-100 score combining five components: Registration verification (up to 20), Financial transparency (up to 20), Organizational transparency (up to 15), Third-party assessment (up to 10), and Community signals (up to 5), starting from a base of 30 with up to 25 points of penalty for red flags. Self-reported components are capped at 70 to prevent gaming. Full breakdown in Methodology.

No. The score is computed from public data and external signals; the charity has no input into the calculation. Verifying a profile (claim flow) raises Registration verification by a few points because identity is confirmed, but it does not unlock paid placement or score boosts.

Red flags are automatic detections: high executive pay relative to size, low program-spend ratio, missing recent filings, sanctions-list match, or governance concerns from news. Each flag links to its evidence. If you believe one is wrong, claim your profile and contact [email protected] - we review false-positive reports promptly.

Common reasons: data completeness under 60% (we don't know enough to give credit for transparency), missing recent filings, no third-party rating yet ingested, or a recent red flag. Brand recognition is not part of the formula - the score is data-driven, not popularity-driven.

Look for: (1) presence in this database (we only ingest official registries, so being listed is itself a verification signal); (2) a recent filing date; (3) Integrity Assessment 65+; (4) no critical red flags or sanctions matches; (5) consistent name and registration number with the charity's own website. Two minutes of checking beats a clever-sounding fundraising pitch.

Depends on your country, the charity's tax status in your country, and your own situation. A US 501(c)(3) is deductible for US donors but not automatically for European donors; cross-border deductibility usually requires programs like TGE (Transnational Giving Europe) or intermediary friend foundations. Check the deductibility code on the profile and consult your tax advisor.

Not directly - we are a research and verification platform, not a donation processor. Each profile links to the charity's own donation page where available, so you donate to the charity directly without a middleman or platform fee.

Either it is not formally registered (caution sign), it is registered in a country we have not yet imported, or our import for that country is partial. You can submit it via Add Charity and we will review and import if it is a verifiable nonprofit.

Use the 'Report a problem' link on the profile, or email [email protected] with what you observed and any supporting documentation (URLs, screenshots, regulator complaints). We review reports promptly. If you suspect actual fraud or financial crime, file with the relevant regulator (IRS, Charity Commission, etc.) - we are not a law-enforcement body.

Open your charity's profile, click 'Claim this charity', and follow the email-verification flow. Once admin-approved you can edit your description, mission, contact details, programs, and social links. Owner-edits are protected from being overwritten by future re-imports.

An authorized representative of the organization claimed and verified the profile through our claim flow. Verified profiles get a badge, slightly higher Registration-verification score, and the right to edit fields directly. Unverified profiles run purely on public-registry data.

If you represent the charity, claim the profile and edit it. If you are a donor or third party who spotted an error, email [email protected] with the charity slug and the specific field; we re-verify against the source registry and correct misimports.

Either you are looking at a different fiscal year (we surface the most recent filing), there is a known schema variance (e.g. 990-PF reports revenue in a different field), or our parser missed a tag in your specific filing. Email us with the EIN and we will correct it.

Yes. Free tier 100 requests/day with basic fields, Pro $99/month for 10,000 requests/day with full fields including financials and officers, Enterprise custom for higher volume. Auth via Authorization: Bearer header. Full docs at /api/docs/.

Yes - via the REST API or via Enterprise bulk CSV/NDJSON exports to S3 or your endpoint. The data is published under Creative Commons BY 4.0 with attribution to GiveRadar. Email [email protected] for Enterprise pricing.

Free: 100 requests per day. Pro: 10,000 requests per day. Enterprise: 100,000 requests per day, or custom for higher volume. Limits reset daily at 00:00 UTC. The current usage is returned in response headers so you can self-throttle.

Yes, on any charity profile. Reviews require email verification and feed into the Community signals component of the Integrity Assessment. We moderate for spam and abuse but not for opinion - critical reviews stay if they are real.

No. We never sell or share user emails. They are used only to manage your account, verify reviews, and process claim requests. Full details in our Privacy policy.

Yes. All charity data is sourced from official government registers that are public records by law. Officer and trustee names are included only where the source registry publishes them publicly. Generic charity contact information (info@, contact@) is treated as organizational, not personal data. Right-to-be-forgotten requests on personal contact data extracted from charity websites are honored - email [email protected].

Charity Navigator covers about 200,000 mid-to-large US charities with editorial ratings. GiveRadar covers 8.7M+ nonprofits across 65+ countries with an algorithmic Integrity Assessment. We surface CN scores when available, so you do not lose that signal by switching - you gain global coverage, sanctions screening, and contact data.

Candid (formerly GuideStar) covers about 2.5M US nonprofits with self-reported transparency seals. GiveRadar covers 8.7M nonprofits globally with an objective, algorithmic score - the charity has no input into the calculation, so it cannot be gamed by uploading more documents.

ProPublica is a free Form 990 lookup for the US (~1.8M filings) - excellent if you want to download the source filings as PDF. GiveRadar parses those filings into structured fields, adds 64 more countries, layers an Integrity Assessment on top, and screens against sanctions lists.