How to evaluate a children and youth charity

A starting point, not a checklist. The questions are the same at every size. Only the form of the answer changes.

Start with the goal, not the age group

"Children and youth" describes who is served, not what changes. A summer camp, a mentoring agency, a job training program and a service for young people leaving foster care are four different businesses with four different measures. So the opening question is not what you do for kids. It is what is different for a young person a year after they meet you.

What a children and youth organization actually controls

1. Whether young people keep coming back. Almost everything in this sector is voluntary. A young person who does not want to be there stops coming, and as such retention is among the most honest numbers available here. Ask what share of the young people who start are still there six months later, and what happens when someone stops showing up.
2. Whether it can name its child protection standard. Plan to Protect is the standard most Canadian organizations working with children have adopted, and there are equivalents. Ask which one they follow and when the policies were last reviewed. A well-run organization will be pleased you asked.
3. Who the adults are. For a young person, the program is a person. Ask who a young person meets on their first day, then ask that person how long they have been here and what keeps them. It is a warm question rather than an audit, and the answer tells you most of what you want to know about whether this place holds on to good people.
4. Whether it involves young people in improving the work. Ask how the organization brings young people into decisions about its services, and ask for specific examples of what changed as a result. Youth advisory groups are common. Ones that have changed a decision are rarer, and much more interesting.

Mentoring

The evidence here is unusually clear and it is all about duration. Matches that last a year or more produce gains. Matches that end within a few months are associated with declines on several measures, which means a short match is not a small good, it is a risk (Grossman and Rhodes, 2002). A national study of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Canada, following 859 young people over 18 months, found the benefits concentrated in relationships lasting past twelve months (DeWit et al., 2016).

• What is the average length of a match, and what share end in the first six months?
• How are matches supervised, and what happens when one breaks?

Good: names an average duration, and describes what the organization does when a match ends badly. Weak: reports matches made. Matches made is the number most often celebrated and the one that tells you least.

Camps, clubs, sport and art

• Who is actually here, and who is not? The barrier is usually practical: fees, equipment, a ride.
• Do the same children come back next season?

Good: children who could not otherwise afford to be there are there, and most return. Weak: attendance totals. Confidence, resilience and character are commonly claimed in this part of the sector and are genuinely hard to measure. That is not a reason to avoid funding it. It is a reason not to fund it on the strength of the claim.

Youth employment and training

• What share of people who start actually finish?
• What share are working or in school six months later, and how do you know?

Good: follows up at six months and admits the follow-up is incomplete, because it always is. Weak: completions and certificates issued.

Young people leaving care

This is the part of the sector with the deepest need and the least data. Canada does not systematically track how young people do after they leave care, so nobody can tell you the national picture. Not knowing that is not a failure of the charity. Not knowing its own is.

What is known is stark. Roughly 40% of young people who age out rely on social assistance, against about 2.5% of the general population, and between a quarter and half experience precarious housing. Canada is one of very few Western countries with no national standards for what happens at that transition. The closest thing is a voluntary set of standards written by the sector itself, covering everything from money and housing to relationships and culture, and a charity that can tell you which parts of it they work on has thought about a whole life rather than a crisis.

• Does your support end on a birthday, or when the young person is ready?
• Who is still in touch with them two years later?

Good: describes a relationship that continues past the end of the program, and can say roughly how many young people it is holding. Weak: workshops delivered. The organizations doing this well tend to do unglamorous things, including emergency rent, replacing lost ID, bursaries, and being the person who picks up the phone.

Youth mental health and youth homelessness

Both are the same evaluation as the adult versions, with one addition each. For mental health, ask whether the service was designed for young people or is an adult service with a younger waiting room, and who can consent to treatment at what age, which varies by province. For homelessness, ask about the link to care, because a large share of young people sleeping rough came out of the child welfare system. See how to evaluate a mental health charity and how to evaluate a housing and homelessness charity.

What none of these questions reach is whether a young person wants to be there. You can see that in ten minutes, so ask to visit on an ordinary day rather than at an event, and watch whether young people talk to staff without being prompted. Then ask how many of the organization's staff or board came through a program like this one.

Once the program holds up, check the organization behind it.

Questions people also ask

What is the single best question to ask a children and youth charity?

How long do young people stay, and how long do the adults stay.

What is Plan to Protect?

A Canadian child protection standard covering screening, training, supervision, reporting and policy review, used by a wide range of organizations that work with children. Some organizations meet an equivalent standard instead. Either answer is fine. No answer is the problem.

How many children are in care in Canada?

About 61,104 children and youth were in out-of-home care as of March 2022, roughly 84% of them in family-based settings. An estimated 6,700 age out each year, a figure that dates from 2003 because no current national count exists.

What standards exist for young people leaving care in Canada?

None in law. The closest thing is the Child Welfare League of Canada's Equitable Standards for Transitions to Adulthood for Youth in Care, published in 2021 and entirely voluntary. It covers eight areas: money, education, housing, relationships, culture and spirituality, health, rights, and the wider work of becoming an adult. It is a useful list to hold a charity's programs up against, because the gaps show quickly.

Does mentoring actually work?

Yes, modestly, and mainly when the relationship lasts. A meta-analysis of 70 studies covering more than 25,000 young people found a small average effect (Raposa et al., 2019). Duration is the variable that matters most, which is why match length is the number to ask for.

Is a youth program with no outcome data worth funding?

Often, yes. Many good organizations in this sector have never had the money to measure. The distinction to make is between an organization that has not measured and one that has never thought about it. Ask what it would want to know if someone paid for it.