# Our mission is to guide donors to high-impact nonprofits by producing ratings of cost-effectiveness.

We believe strongly in the nonprofit sector as a way to improve people’s lives. Our ratings are designed to help the sector flourish by rewarding impact.

### Impact analysis makes for a better nonprofit sector

Social impact is the change in outcomes caused by a social program relative to cost. Some programs are more effective than others at changing outcomes. However, this data is not available to most donors, preventing them from pinpointing the impact of their own donation. Through data analysis, ImpactMatters calculates the impact of a nonprofit’s program and issues a rating. Donors can use these ratings to make more informed decisions about their giving.

Impact analysis is important because it can highlight substantial differences in effectiveness. Consider two programs pursuing the same mission: boosting income for the poor.

TechnoServe

$30 in additional income per$1 spent by the nonprofit

### vs.

Nonprofit B

60 cents in additional income per \$1 spent by the nonprofit

TechnoServe is more than 50x as cost-effective at boosting income for people living in poverty. We believe donors and nonprofits benefit when this information is presented transparently.

### How are we different?

Our ratings answer a critical question: How will a donation directly improve a life? To answer that question, we follow three simple principles:

##### Reward impact

We estimate the changes in outcomes, such as lives saved or income earned, that are attributed to a nonprofit’s work. We divide these changes in outcomes by costs and compare to benchmarks to rate cost-effectiveness. Highly rated nonprofits are making good use of a dollar to change lives.

We focus on what matters: impact. Most ratings sites focus heavily on financial indicators like overhead vs. program spend. Doing so punishes nonprofits that spend money to be successful — and fails to identify which nonprofits are doing good.

##### Support nonprofits

In our experience, nonprofits want to share their impact with the public, but doing so can be a complicated and costly process. We provide tips, tools and resources to make the process easier. We believe strongly in the nonprofit sector as a way to improve people’s lives and want to see it flourish.