Which makes the latest project of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP), an independent watchdog of foundations, all the more promising. This month, the NCRP unveiled Philamplify, a website that the Washington Post describes as “Yelp for the philanthropy sector.” But that sells the site short. It offers not just crowdsourcing intel on philanthropy, but also expert evaluations, two types of assessments that are rarely conjoined. Philamplify features detailed, independent reports on the nation’s leading foundations produced by NCRP staff and provides a forum for the public to weigh in on those foundations’ successes and failures.

Philamplify builds on recent efforts that the sector has undertaken in its almost fanatical dedication to achieving and monitoring “impact.” Many foundations, for instance, contract with policy shops to conduct rigorous evaluations of their own programs. There is no reason to doubt the integrity or the rigorousness of these arrangements. But the analysis that comes out of them is left entirely in the control of the funders themselves. Sometimes summaries are released to the public; sometimes not. Similarly, many leading foundations have embraced the “Grantee Perception Reports” developed by the Center for Effective Philanthropy, which allow funders to solicit feedback from key constituencies and stakeholders. But again, the process is wholly driven by the foundations themselves.

Philamplify, on the other hand, grounds the task of evaluation outside the foundation walls. As Lisa Ranghelli, the organization’s director of foundation assessment, explains, NCRP designed Philamplify out of a belief that “any organization, whether it welcomes feedback and seeks to change, or does not, benefits from having external stakeholders who can help hold that organization to account.” The reports it produces are made public and the site that houses them actively solicits input from “everyone involved with or touched by philanthropy,” turning foundation assessment “into an interactive experience.” These assessments, in a marriage that the NCRP has long championed, incorporate the sector’s preoccupation with impact—requiring the development of clearly defined objectives with metrics to measure progress—with a commitment to equity, asking that foundations confront systems that perpetuate inequality, specifically target underserved communities, and involve all those affected by philanthropy in the grantmaking process. They demand that foundations be both “strategic and just.” Each report includes a series of recommendations along these lines that the public can vote on and offers a comment section to elaborate on these views.

Philamplify is now up and running with three assessments, though a number of others are in the works and the NCRP hopes to take on many of the 100 largest foundations in the U.S. in the future. There is a report on the William Penn Foundation, which has become the leading grantmaker in the Philadelphia region; one on the Lumina Foundation, in Indianapolis, which focuses on expanding access to higher education; and another on the Robert W. Woodruff Foundation in Atlanta, which focuses on science and education. The NCRP researchers appreciated that the foundation world would consider the prospect of independent assessments “scary,” but they have produced analysis that is rigorous but fair—and never gratuitously critical. For instance, the assessment on the William Penn Foundation reports that many community members think highly of its programs in the arts and in the environment, but are also skeptical of some of its leading education programs, and want the foundation to take a more aggressive leadership role in the Philadelphia area.