Where User Perceptions of Charities and Independent Nonprofit Ratings Meet: Inside the Black Box of Nonprofit Performance

Scholars have pointed to the multidimensional nature of nonprofit performance, but some contend that user perspectives are often overlooked. To the extent that users rate their experiences and interactions with nonprofits on public online platforms, such as Google, this content presents an opportunity for tapping into user perspectives of charities and considering whether these perceptions align with those of independent nonprofit rating agencies. Do online user reviews of nonprofits converge with the performance assessments of independent charity raters? We answer this question through a mixed-methods study involving a quantitative analysis of ratings data from Charity Navigator and Google user ratings for 228 nonprofits, followed by a qualitative content analysis of online reviews conducted on a subset of these cases. We find a small but positive association between user and independent ratings, although service users tend to base their ratings on different factors than ratings agencies. Our findings carry a number of important implications for those interested in nonprofit performance. For nonprofit leaders, online user ratings and reviews offer a window into the subjective impressions of service users and can serve as a complementary source of performance feedback to more traditional types of data. For funders and donors, our findings discourage exclusive reliance on independent ratings in assessing nonprofit performance and point to the need to account for user perspectives in the calculus of performance.