How much of your donation reaches the beneficiary?
%BENE is the share of an institution's annual budget that goes directly to its beneficiaries. The rest goes to administration and fundraising.
65%
is the minimum I ask for. Each gold dot is $1 that reaches a person.
Each institution's %BENE
Calculated from their latest annual financial statements.
The vertical line marks 65%, the minimum I require to recommend an institution.
One rule for everyone
%BENE = budget that goes directly to beneficiaries ÷ total annual budget.
- Beneficiaries: everything that would not exist without the program: scholarships, medicines, therapies, teachers, materials.
- Administration: overheads such as accounting and management.
- Fundraising: everything it costs to raise money.
Each expense is classified by the activity that causes it. That way one institution's %BENE can be compared with another's.
What Switzerland has done for decades
In Switzerland, the Zewo seal requires certified NGOs to spend at least 65% of their expenses on projects and services. Peru has no equivalent seal. %BENE and Certifika aim to give Peruvian donors that same confidence.
%BENE measures efficiency, not impact. An efficient institution can still choose the wrong program. That is why Certifika also assesses governance, transparency and results.