GoodSpark started in 2008 with a simple idea: younger people wanted to give to charity but were overwhelmed by the options and skeptical about where their money was going. So we built a platform that did the research for them.

We developed our own evaluation methodology that went beyond financials. We sat down with organizations, asked hard questions about program effectiveness, governance, and sustainability, and published our findings. Users could contribute through our platform and decide exactly how their dollars were allocated across vetted causes.

The timing was rough. Launching a giving platform during the 2008 financial crisis was, in hindsight, a challenge. But the technology worked, the methodology held up, and another nonprofit eventually adopted our platform to fuel their own efforts.

In the years since, the landscape has caught up to where we were heading. The "Overhead Myth" movement validated our instinct that financials alone don't tell the story. GiveWell proved that rigorous, transparent evaluation could move billions of dollars. Charity Navigator evolved from a pure financial scorecard to a multi-dimensional rating system.

We've relaunched GoodSpark as an educational resource. The Giving Guide synthesizes the best thinking from across the evaluation landscape with our own firsthand evaluation experience into something practical and usable. Our goal is the same as it was in 2008: help people find organizations doing real good, not just feel-good work.