GreatNonprofits is charity evaluator that bases its ratings entirely on supporter reviews. Seems like an interesting alternative to Charity Navigator as a optional "first-filter" for exploring charities -- especially if you are curious about cause areas beyond what's focused on in the EA world.
Pros/Cons? Give me your take.
I’m a fan of “wisdom of crowds”. But I suspect—at least for the top-rated ones—there has been coordinated ballot box stuffing by staff and supporters. And like many user reviews online, it tends toward bimodal of "great" or "awful". Most people don't make the effort to write "it was ok" reviews.
I feel there's too much noise and not enough signal to make it a worthwhile source.
I don’t think GreatNonprofits work for EA, because differences between problems and implementation of solutions greatly dwarf differences between say… overhead or peer review. EA is specifically meant to counter generic feel-good donations.
I don't think the answer is binary whether this "works" for EA as a whole or not. I think it can be easy to get caught in our EA bubble where we only look to very select research organizations to decide what the best charities are (to their best knowledge). I think that there is a world where other charity aggregators can act as an entry point to exploring cause areas and charities -- especially those that are too small or that don't have the funds or resources to commit to extensive impact assessments.
This is a thoughtful answer and I would agree with much of this!