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Michael Thatcher

Michael Thatcher

CEO of Charity Navigator

Aug 18, 2026

0:35
Um, but before we do that, for, for people that may not have heard that long ago episode or if you have a, a, haven't been keeping up, can you just talk a little bit about w- what is Charity Navigator? What do you do there?
0:45
Sure.
0:46
So, um, and this is our ...
0:48
We're in our 25th year now.
0:50
So Charity Navigator is the nation's largest independent evaluator of nonprofits.
0:56
We have a database with all legally registered charities in the US, so that's about 1.6 million charities, and we issue ratings on about 250,000 of those.
1:09
We'll get into the details of what's in a rating, but essentially it's a website.

16 MINS LATER

16:57
Mm-hmm
19:38
Do they go into the Charity Navigator platform and then say, "Okay, I wanna give into that fund," or, "I've spotted a charity that I like," and then just go ahead and make that donation, or do you have some sort of donor-advised fund capacity where they drop in there and just deposit money and, and crystallize the donation at that juncture, but then deploy it later on?
19:58
Um, the way we've set up the funds, and funds is perhaps a misnomer in, in the, the way you're describing the scenario.
20:07
We set the funds up as a collective for the donation.
20:11
We don't hold money.
20:13
So we don't have a donor-advised fund.
20:15
The fund goes, uh, from the...
20:18
Let's say the, the, the donation goes from the donor.

6 MINS LATER

26:26
How do you hold their hand, uh, to, uh, to ensure that they don't get overwhelmed by the, uh, the amount of information that you have, uh, a-available there?

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