The Wall Street Journal's Carl Bailik wrote a good article in the December 19, 2008 paper about the value of rating charities. He says that most individual donors do not have the time to fully research all of their charitable donations. Most people spend much less time researching their donations than researching their stock picks (clearly, being in the WSJ, this is targeting a certain audience). But donors still want to make sure their contributions are going to good causes, and not just going to pay for overhead or fundraising expenses.