You’ve completed the Factory For Good Finder. Now, you know what causes matter to you most. But, choosing where to give, how much, and how to measure success can feel overwhelming. This guide offers a simple, high-level framework to move from intention to action with clarity and confidence.
Step 1: Build Your Giving Profile
Congrats! You’ve already completed Step 1 by finishing our Factory For Good Finder. If you haven't completed this step, start here.
Through our Finder, you’ve defined your personal values, chosen your giving style, established constraints and aligned on your impact goals, but now what?
Once you’ve defined your purpose and giving plan, it’s easy to get lost in the different organizations and causes to give to. That’s where we can help. We’ve provided a clear, concise vetting process, making it easy to choose from a variety of giving opportunities.
Step 2: Vet Like a Venture Capitalist
You’ve got your causes and established your profile. Now, it’s time to figure out who to trust with your time, money, and resources. This is where things can get overwhelming fast, but, it doesn’t have to be.
We recommend vetting giving opportunities the same way great investors vet startups: with clarity and structure.
First, make sure that each organization meets a standard criteria:
- Is it a 501c3 nonprofit or a public nonprofit?
- Was it founded more than two years ago?
- Does it have a website, physical address, and phone number?
- Have real, credible people validated this organization?
- Have third parties validated its performance?
- Does it have a sound and tested methodology to trace its outcomes?
- Does 70%+ of its budget go to programs?
- Do they report on their impact?
If an opportunity passes this initial test, then, you’ll want to assign a quick confidence rating (low/medium/high) to the following:
- Their model: Do you believe in the way they’re tackling the problem?
- Their team: Do they seem trustworthy, capable, and values-aligned?
- Their transparency: Can you easily understand where your money goes and what it does?
Once you feel you have a list of organizations that pass this initial criteria and confidence rating, it’s time to move forward with assigning an impact score.
Step 3: Assigning an Impact Score
The “Impact Score” is a way to determine what impact a donation (of time or money) will have and is a tool to compare one donation to another before committing any amount.
While you may find it useful to come up with your own score, Alex has created this scoring system as an example. Here’s what his scoring looks like.
There is a potential of 15 points to be earned for each potential donation. First, go through and tally your points according to the description below to arrive at your respective impact score. For each donation, you will land anywhere from 0–15 points, with 15 being the highest impact.
1 pt - for each value it hits. As an example, Alex checks for alignment with his values: Education, Economic Growth, and Humanitarian Work (3 potential)
Points for the level of people assisted (5 potential)
- 1 pt very low: 1 person
- 2 pts low: 2–10 people
- 3 pts medium: 10–25 people
- 4 pts large: 25–100 people
- 5 pts very large: 100+
Points for fundamentally changing each person’s life (5 potential)
- 5 pts very high
- 4 pts high
- 3 pts medium
- 2 pts low
- 1 pt very low
- 1 pt if it involves the family
- 1 pt your gut tells you it’s impactful/personal to you
Add up all the points, then place it next to your donation in your records. If you decide to donate, make sure to include the Impact Score on your Impact Report, which we’ll discuss next, so you can hold yourself accountable to the anticipated level of impact.
Step 4: Track and Report Your Impact
Giving your time, resources, and money away without tracking its impact is like running a business without checking your books. You might be doing great work, but, you won’t know for sure unless you pause to measure.
That doesn’t mean you need to build a specific dashboard or hire a data analyst. It just means you need a simple system to reflect on how your giving is going.
At Factory For Good, we use an impact report ledger. We recommend creating a system that logs specific metrics for each donation made, keeping things organized by tracking information like:
- Date of donation
- Organization name
- Dollar amount
- Number of people impacted
- Form of assistance (ex: direct aid, education, capacity building, etc)
- Which part of our giving profile it aligned with
- Scale of giving (small experiment vs. major investment)
- Impact score
That may sound like a lot, but it’s all in service of one goal: helping you see what’s working and where to go deeper.
But, here’s the key thing to remember. You don’t need to follow our method exactly. You just need a method that works for you and your family.
Maybe it’s running a Google Sheet. Maybe it’s a journal entry after each donation. Maybe it’s a quarterly sit-down where you review who you give to and how it felt.
At the end of the year, you should have a compiled list of stats and stories from your giving throughout the year. This annual report will help you reflect, celebrate wins, and identify lessons for the next year. It also brings clarity to a big question: Where did you have the most impact, and where should you go next?
Conclusion: Strategic Giving Starts with You
You don’t need to be a philanthropist to give with purpose. All you need is a plan that feels true to you and your values, a tracking system in place, and a willingness to keep learning along the way.
By completing the Factory For Good Finder, you’ve already taken the hardest step–starting. Now, with a thoughtful giving profile, a simple vetting process, an impact scoring system, and a method to track your results, you’re equipped to give intentionally and grow your impact over time.
When you give with structure and self-awareness, you don’t just help others, you build a more meaningful life and drive greater impact.
Overall, trust your gut, track your contributions, and keep building your own Factory for Good.
