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Charity Rankings: Delivering Development or Dehumanising Aid?

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  • Logan Cochrane
  • Alec Thornton

Abstract

Individuals want to know which organisations to donate to, and a variety of organisations have developed ranking systems to guide them. This paper explores charity ranking, with a particular focus on the increasing role of impact and ‘cost‐effectiveness’. Ranking systems are composed of a selection of metrics, which may miss important components and, as a result, create a set of unintended outcomes. We argue that an emphasis on cost‐effectiveness and impact in ranking promotes simple, technocratic activities, negatively affects human rights‐based interventions and de‐prioritises inventions that work in remote, complex settings. The topic of charity ranking and its influence on private donors is limited in the literature, and this paper seeks to make a contribution to this important debate. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Suggested Citation

  • Logan Cochrane & Alec Thornton, 2016. "Charity Rankings: Delivering Development or Dehumanising Aid?," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(1), pages 57-73, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:jintdv:v:28:y:2016:i:1:p:57-73
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    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1002/jid.3201
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    Cited by:

    1. Logan Cochrane & John-Michael Davis, 2020. "Scaling the INGO: What the Development and Expansion of Canadian INGOs Tells Us," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 9(8), pages 1-14, August.
    2. Logan Cochrane, 2017. "Stages of food security: A co-produced mixed-methods methodology," Progress in Development Studies, , vol. 17(4), pages 291-306, October.
    3. Jonathan Morduch & Ariane Szafarz, 2018. "Earning to Give: Occupational Choice for Effective Altruists," Working Papers CEB 18-017, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.

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