Community Outreach

South Florida’s biggest charities are among the top in the nation when it comes to raising money and have significantly improved their efficiency in the past year, according to a new study of nonprofit organizations by a watchdog group.

But the area’s nonprofits still spend more than those elsewhere to reel in donations, Charity Navigator said, and that affects their performance.

”They’re raising more money faster than the national average, but they’re spending more money to bring in that money,” said Tim Gamory, chief information officer for the New Jersey-based Charity Navigator, which serves as an information database for donors. “They’re poised to have greater impact with a little more efficiency.”

The good news from the study, which evaluated the biggest nonprofits in the country’s top 25 metropolitan areas, is that South Florida’s charities no longer rank at the bottom in efficiency. Last year, they were 20th out of 20 metropolitan area charities studied; they’ve improved to 10th out of 25, Charity Navigator said.

Area nonprofits deal with several factors that make fundraising more expensive, said Scot Marken, executive director of The Donor’s Forum of South Florida, such as translating materials into several languages and educating a diverse community about charitable U.S. traditions.

”Some cultures don’t have the history of philanthropy in a formal way,” Marken said. “We have to do a lot of education in this multicultural community.”

Nonetheless, he called the study “very encouraging.”

”It’s showing the growing sophistication of the nonprofit and donor community,” he said. “Fundraising expenses are still reasonable, and we are reaping more revenue. You have to spend more to get more.”

To come up with the rankings, Charity Navigator examined the nonprofits’ tax returns, awarding points for fundraising efficiency and expenses, program and administrative expenses, average annual growth of operating revenue, programs and services, and working capital.

Charity Navigator found that 24 South Florida charities boosted donations by 9.1 percent last year, far above the median of 5.43 percent.

It also found that the area had the second-highest concentration of human-service charities in the country but significantly smaller numbers of environmental and religious nonprofits than the national average.