t's not easy to know how to invest time and money into nonprofits with certainty that they are genuinely effective at what they claim to do.

I currently work with The Exodus Road, a nonprofit fighting human trafficking, but I’ve also worked and volunteered alongside other nonprofits in my career. Throughout the years, I’ve learned that there are three qualities that I’ve consistently witnessed in organizations that are genuinely making a difference in our world.

Here are three questions I ask when deciding whether to support any nonprofit:

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Do they innovate, rather than duplicate?

I remember walking down a long stretch of LED-lit storefronts in the shopping district of Dali -- a mountainous city of 3.3 million located in China’s southwestern Yunnan province.

In a one-mile stretch of road, you could find 10+ lookalike “Apple” stores, each selling the same array of accessories and devices while purporting to offer the best price in town. No one store was drastically more effective than the others -- none had done the work of studying their market, analyzing it for holes, and curating a business model that would respond appropriately.

On the other hand, healthy and effective nonprofits must be diligent in the work of ethnographic research in prospective communities. They must consult with experts and professionals in the space about what the community needs — and if their organization would be welcomed to help respond to those needs.

Wise organizations take care to assess if other nonprofits are responding similarly within a region and if increased NGO presence would represent a benefit to the work of justice in the community. This encourages a spirit of collaboration, which leads me to a second quality that you should look for in the nonprofits you support.

Do they realize that collaboration > competition?
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As counterintuitive as it feels in our hyper-competitive world, the work of justice is not a zero-sum game.

The global pandemic has heightened our awareness of the need for “togetherness,” but this isn’t a natural propensity. Many nonprofits are born from a catalyst moment -- a sobering realization of an issue that demands a response. Good men and women spring into action to offer a solution, but they often find their newly minted 501c3 strapped for cash and unable to effectively provide the solution they longed to provide to the world.

Marketing campaigns are launched, and donor dollars are vied for. But is this the only way?

I can't tell you how many times I've heard the leaders at The Exodus Road celebrate the great work of partners, law enforcement, and even other nonprofits involved in the fight against human trafficking. When national teams are involved in a rescue or arrest operation, we often intentionally request that our name be withheld from the press release.

This protects investigators, but it also brings infamy to the law enforcement and social workers who are heroes for making their own country that much safer.

A spirit of collaboration can often be a great indicator of healthy organizational leadership. Insert your own nonprofit of choice into the example. Do they celebrate collaboration? When one wins, we all reap the benefit of a world made juster.

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