Tina Rosenberg

Individual charitable donors look at overhead because overhead is something we can measure. But anyone who works in philanthropy knows that percentage spent on overhead is a misleading - and at times actively harmful - test. A new movement seeks to measure the effectiveness of charity in different ways. Organizations in Britain and the US are ranking charities by how much it costs them to reach their goal: What do they spend to provide someone with a year of health? A year of education? A year without hunger? These attempts to put numbers on charitable effectiveness are still new - and extremely controversial. Tina Rosenberg draws on reporting from her New York Times "Fixes" column to examine this new trend - and what it means for you, and how you can use this research to make your philanthropic dollars go much farther.