Click on the area that interests you to view our program-specific “do-it-yourself” charity evaluation questions. Animal welfare - shelters Related information: For policy and public advocacy, see our questions for advocacy programs. Questions: Do you have more animals surrendered than you can take? What do you do in these cases? Do you have statistics on how often, and after how long, animals in your shelters are adopted? Do you have statistics on how often, and after how long, adopted animals are returned? What are your requirements for people to adopt animals? Do you have a process for verifying their eligibility? How do you monitor the living conditions in your shelters? (We recommend a visit to a shelter to gauge the living conditions of the animals.) How would your activities change if you had more revenue than expected? Less? Would more revenue translate directly into more animals accepted, and up to what point? Grantmaking organizations Questions: Do you have a database of grants with the recipient, purpose, and size of grant for each? Do you have a summary breakdown of your grants by activity type, cause and/or region? Can you share full applications that were (a) accepted (b) rejected (c) partially funded or rejected primarily due to insufficient funds as opposed to poor application quality? How do you evaluate grantees after providing a grant? Can you share the full reports from your followup evaluations? Have there been cases in which grantees were found not to be in compliance with the grant requirements? How did you respond? How would your budget likely change if you had more revenue than expected? Less? Research organizations Questions: What type of research do you fund? What portion of your organization's expenses are devoted to funding research as opposed to other activities? What sort of innovations are you hoping to fund, and within what time frame? Do you make grants to independent researchers or have your own in-house research staff? For grants to independent researchers: Do you have more eligible grantees than you are able to fund? If so, what process do you use to narrow the field and select grantees? How would you likely use additional funds? For in-house own research staff: What are the qualifications of your staff? Would additional funds enable you to hire more staff? How would you use additional funds? Do you have reports that provide your organization's track record of producing concrete output from your research - for example, analysis of patents, publications, or citations that came from your research? What are the biggest research contributions that your organization has been a part of to date? What was the role of other organizations in these contributions? To what extent does your funding overlap with (i.e., fund the same organizations as) government funding? Private-sector funding? Religious education What messages are emphasized? How is instruction given? Who are the students? What is their past involvement with the religion? How are student taught to regard those who are not members of the religion or religious sect? To what extent does the organization follow students over time? Does it track what percentage of former students remain involved in the religion and the extent of their involvement? How much has been spent? How many students have participated? How much instruction have they each received? How would your budget likely change if you had more revenue than expected? Less? Would additional revenue translate directly into more students given instruction, and up to what point?
