Charity Navigator Acquires Giving Portfolio Platform Causeway

Credit: Causeway

Charity Navigator, which holds nearly 200,000 nonprofits accountable by providing ratings of their organizations to help donors make giving decisions, has acquired startup Causeway. The Causeway platform allows donors to give directly to nonprofits through personal giving portfolios, expanding donors' ability to become sustainers and philanthropists for their favorite causes.

Through support from the O'Shea Family Foundation and an anonymous donor, Charity Navigator announced yesterday it had acquired Causeway, which transferred its intellectual property and brand to Charity Navigator in the deal.

"With more than 1.5 million nonprofits in the United States alone, giving can be an overwhelming process for donors," Michael Thatcher, president and CEO of Charity Navigator, said in a statement. "The integration of Causeway into Charity Navigator will remove this barrier, empowering donors to fund nonprofits by cause and, effectively, create a subscription to good."

In 2015, Charity Navigator developed an on-site feature called a “Giving Basket” that allowed donors to give up to $100,000 as a one-time or monthly gift via a variety of payment options. With Causeway, Charity Navigator indicated it’ll be easy to track donations across multiple nonprofits with a single tax receipt.

Charity Navigator labeled Causeway as the first to combine a donation management system, composed of managed “cause funds,” with automatic gifts and a management portfolio. Charity Navigator will manage these cause funds like an investment portfolio to ensure the most highly rated and efficient nonprofits receive funds. In the meantime, the nonprofit evaluator is seeking additional funding to expedite and expand the integration.

Ben Horwitz, who co-founded Causeway with Reed Rosenbluth in 2022, served as CEO of the platform. Through the acquisition, he has joined Charity Navigator as vice president of business development and new ventures and provided a video walkthrough of the platform. Here’s the four-step process donors need to take to set up a portfolio.

1. Determine a Monthly Gift

The platform asks the donor how much they want to donate each month.

2. Select From Designated Cause Funds

That donor can then select among five categories — animal welfare, climate change, global health, poverty alleviation and racial equity — and determine the percentage of their monthly donation that should go toward each cause fund. Charity Navigator intends to add more cause funds by next year. In the walkthrough demonstration, Horwitz showed 62% allocation toward global health and a 38% allocation toward poverty alleviation.

3. Designate Specific Nonprofits

If the donor has specific organizations they wish to support, they can add them and designate each organization a certain portion of the fund.

4. Create an Account

The platform then asks the donor to create a username and password, as well as adding their payment information. After that, more details on the funds and allocations are available for the donor to view and adjust as desired.

"Our world is full of tough decisions, but choosing where to donate shouldn't be so difficult," Horwitz said in a statement. "We are proud to join forces with Charity Navigator to advance our shared goal of turning intent into action."