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Is That Charity Legit? 8 Official Sources — and Why "Registered" Isn't "Rated"

"Check if it's registered" and "check its rating" get used interchangeably in advice about vetting a charity, and they're not the same check. A registry confirms a charity legally exists and can (usually) issue tax receipts — that's it. A rating is a financial or governance judgment, and most raters only cover a slice of the charities that exist: a specific country, a filing type, or a revenue floor. A charity can be legitimately registered and simply not appear on any rating site at all — that's not a red flag, it just means the rater's coverage stops before it.

This isn't a ranking of charities, and it isn't advice on how much to give anyone. It's what each of the seven sources below is set up to check, read off their own methodology and about pages, so you use the one that actually answers your question.

Pick by what you're checking

• A large, well-known US charity — Charity Navigator or CharityWatch will likely have it rated.
• A small or newly formed charity, anywhere — the raters probably don't cover it yet; go straight to its country's government registry to confirm it legally exists.
• A charity outside the US — skip the US-only raters entirely. Australia has the ACNC, England and Wales have the Charity Commission, Canada has the CRA's list, Korea has the National Tax Service's disclosure system.
• What a charity says about itself, not a third party's grade — Candid's Seal of Transparency, which is self-reported disclosure, not a rating.
• Whether a Korean donation is tax-deductible — the NTS public-interest-corporation disclosure system or 1365기부포털, not a US rating site.

At a glance

A government registry answers "does this legally exist and can it issue a receipt." Only the first three answer anything about how well it's run — and even they don't cover most of the world's charities.

The List

1. Charity Navigator (US 501(c)(3) only, free) — Its Encompass Rating covers finance and accountability, but eligibility is narrow: the charity must be a US 501(c)(3) public charity, must have filed at least three electronic Form 990s in the past six years, and the most recent filing can't be a simplified Form 990-EZ or 990-N. Plenty of small, entirely legitimate nonprofits file the simplified forms and never get an Encompass Rating — "not yet rated" there is common and isn't itself a warning sign.
2. Give.org (BBB Wise Giving Alliance, US only, free) — Evaluates a charity against its 20 Standards for Charity Accountability, covering governance, results reporting, finances, and fundraising appeals. Reports are free, but evaluation happens when a charity is reviewed or a complaint prompts one — it isn't a live rating of every registered US charity the way a search-and-see tool would be.
3. CharityWatch (US, free basic grade) — Publishes A+ to F letter grades built mainly from a "cost to raise $100" and program-spending calculation, based on audited financials and tax filings its analysts review directly rather than pulling from a self-reported form. Its own site describes covering roughly 600 major American charities — a small slice by count, but it's the group most willing to publish a bad grade the charity didn't sign off on. The full rating guide with detailed writeups sits behind paid membership; the letter grade itself is free.
4. GuideStar (Candid) (US-based, wide adoption, free) — Explicitly not a rating. A charity earns a Bronze, Silver, Gold or Platinum Seal of Transparency by publishing information about itself — mission, staff, programs, goals, financials — to its own profile. A Platinum Seal means a charity discloses a lot; it doesn't mean an outside party checked any of it against a standard.
5. ACNC Charity Register (Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission, free) — Australia's government regulator. The Register is free to search and shows a charity's purposes, the people running it, and its financial and annual reporting — legal registration status, not a performance grade.
6. Search the charity register (Charity Commission for England and Wales, free) — The UK government's statutory regulator for charities in England and Wales. Search by name, number, or area of operation; results show trustees, aims, and finances. Same category as the ACNC entry: confirms legal status, doesn't rate performance. Scotland and Northern Ireland run separate registers (OSCR and CCNI respectively) — this one doesn't cover them.
7. CRA List of Charities (Canada Revenue Agency, free) — The federal tax registry of charities registered under Canada's Income Tax Act and eligible to issue official donation receipts. Confirms tax-registration status, not quality — the same distinction as the Australian and UK entries above.
8. 1365기부포털 (National Tax Service disclosure data, aggregated by the Ministry of the Interior and Safety, free) — Korea doesn't run a single "is this legitimate" charity register the way Australia or the UK do. Instead, roughly 10,000 공익법인 (public-interest corporations) are required to file annual disclosure documents — settlement statements, audit reports, and collection/spending reports — with the NTS, and 1365기부포털 pulls that filing data together with the separate list of roughly 250 organisations registered with local government to collect public donations. It's a disclosure aggregator, not a rating: it shows what a group filed, not a grade on it.

Keep the list on your own board

Save all eight to your board in one go, so the next time someone forwards you a fundraising link, you're not hunting for the right registry from scratch — you already have it.

FAQ

What is the ranking based on?

How directly the source answers "is this specific charity trustworthy," for the charities it actually covers. The three US rating services come first because they attempt exactly that question. Candid comes next because it's adjacent — disclosure, not judgment. The four government registries come last, not because they're less useful, but because what they answer is narrower: legal existence, not quality.

Why does "not rated" not mean "not legitimate"?

Because every rater on this list has a coverage limit stated on its own site: Charity Navigator requires a specific IRS filing history, CharityWatch names roughly 600 charities it covers, Give.org rates on request rather than automatically, and none of the three rate anything outside the US at all. A charity can fail to appear on all three and still be exactly what it claims to be — check the government registry in its own country instead.

Does this tell me which charity to donate to, or how much to give?

No. This isn't financial advice, and it isn't a ranking of which cause is worthiest — it's a map of what each verification source checks, so you pick the one that actually answers the question you have about a specific charity.

Why eight?

Eight sources were confirmed against their own about/methodology pages as of 19 August 2026. A ninth candidate — a single pan-European charity register — doesn't exist; European countries each run their own, the same way the UK's nations do, so it was left out rather than approximated.

What is the board?

This list exists as a real, public SaveBoard board, so reading it and keeping it are the same action. Open it as-is, or copy it into your own account and add the specific charity page you looked up.