To earn a Platinum Seal of Transparency, you must share at least one metric on your nonprofit profile. In addition, you have the option of uploading an external evaluation to verify your progress and results.
An external evaluation is done by a professional evaluator or expert--someone who is external to your organization--who has assessed the quality of your organization's programs and overall work. For example, a program assessment completed by a hired evaluator or local university.
Access the Platinum Section
Sign in to guidestar.org or register.
Click Update Nonprofit Profile at the top of the home page.
Click on Edit.
Choose Platinum on the left-side of the page.
Select the External Evaluations category from the drop-down list to update that section.
Upload an External Evaluation
Click the Add an External Evaluation.
Name your document such as "American Evaluation Association-External Evaluation" and select the year the evaluation was performed.
Choose the file from your computer. Please limit files to 20MB and PDF format (.pdf). You may upload up to 20 files.
What is an External Evaluation
External Evaluations are not a single testimonial or a reference. The American Evaluation Association is the professional body for the field and here is how they answer the question “What is an evaluation?” and “Who does evaluation?”. Membership in the American Evaluation Association is a good signal as is membership in an accredited university or membership in a consulting firm or a track record of evaluations performed.
Therefore a range of professionals and a range of evaluations are acceptable as long as:
It’s an evaluation. Evaluation is a systematic process to determine merit, worth, value or significance. A testimonial/reference is a single information point from one person and does not meet the “systematic process” part of the definition.
We’re asking for evaluations done by someone outside of the organization.
That someone has credible qualifications relevant to the evaluation performed. That could be analytic expertise, subject-matter expertise, process expertise.
What's Next?