Top Nonprofits of 2017

According to the National Center for Charitable Statistics (NCCS), there are more than 1.5 million nonprofit organizations registered in the U.S. alone. With so many organizations doing such great work in the world, how does one stand out in the crowd? How does a nonprofit become an internationally-recognized center of do-gooding? How do they get thousands or millions of likes/followers on social media?

Of course, the answer will vary widely depending on the organization. Some nonprofits like the American Red Cross or National Geographic have been around for over 100 years, and others like charity:water and Kiva have been operating for a little over a decade. What these organizations do have in common, however, is that they have a powerful presence in the world and have done a great job translating that presence online.

So we thought, why not coming up with a list of great nonprofits? Not just for their mission statements, or vision statements, or their social media profiles, but a combination of what makes these nonprofits so successful online. As a result, we put together a list of 50 nonprofits that shine online, and the following criteria is how we’ve computed our list:

• Around 100 organizations were evaluated, and the top 50 were published.
• Each organization’s Ahrefs Rank, Domain Rating, URL Rating, and Backlinks number were taken directly from Ahrefs.com.
• Social data was collected for each nonprofit for Facebook Likes and Twitter Followers.
• A composite rank for each nonprofit was determined by ⅔ weight to Ahrefs website rankings (Ahrefs Rank, Domain Rating, URL Rating, and Backlinks) and ⅓ weight to social media (Likes and Followers).
• All data was collected as of September 2017.
• Scroll down to see what each element entails.

#	Nonprofit	Ahrefs Rank	Domain Rating	URL Rating	Backlinks	Likes	Followers
1	National Geographic Society	399	76	89	14.2M	44.7M	18.9M
2	Operation Blessing International	113,368	57	57	32.4K	2.1M	650K
3	TED Talks	288	77	89	34.1M	10.3M	10.3M
4	To Write Love on Her Arms	52,183	60	81	459K	1.5M	294K
5	NPR	278	77	88	121M	6.1M	7.2M
6	Unicef	1,075	88	72	17.8M	6.9M	6.3M
7	WikiLeaks	4,700	68	86	47.6M	3.8M	4.96M
8	Billy Graham Evangelistic Association	19,617	63	83	459K	2.4M	104K
9	Museum of Modern Art	1,931	71	87	6.01M	2M	5.08M
10	Livestrong	15,567	64	84	718K	1.6M	1.02M
11	Human Rights Watch	2,481	70	87	14.6M	2.5M	3.4M
12	Teach for America	20,278	63	84	112K	244K	151K
13	Water.org	18,444	63	83	148K	144K	778K
14	American Red Cross	649	74	88	1.41M	794K	4.8M
15	Metropolitan Museum of Art	2,031	70	88	10.8M	1.9M	3.64M
16	Save the Children	5,608	67	86	886K	1.8M	2.84M
17	DoSomething	10,256	65	84	338K	2.5M	811K
18	The MET	2,031	70	78	12.1M	1.9M	3.5M
19	CARE	13,167	64	84	949K	578K	1.3M
20	PETA	4,490	68	50	51.9K	5.3M	1.02M
21	Disabled American Veterans	14,241	64	83	920K	1.5M	92.5K
22	One	11,805	65	56	606K	1.2M	1.7M
23	YMCA	16,956	63	84	1.16M	349K	35.1K
24	The World Bank	627	74	89	72.1M	2.3M	2.5M
25	The UN Refugee Agency	2,167	70	85	56.1M	2.4M	2.2M
26	PBS	450	75	57	47.9M	3.5M	2.3M
27	Ronald McDonald House Charities	13,558	64	83	212K	964K	33.7K
28	Gates Foundation	4,867	68	87	1.27M	1.4M	1.8M
29	Human Rights Campaign	5,214	67	85	2.38M	2.6M	795K
30	Cleveland Clinic	4,104	68	84	977K	2.1M	1.2M
31	ACLU	3,061	69	87	8.43M	2.2M	1.3M
32	WWF	3,062	69	86	2.26M	2.3M	1.2M
33	Monterery Bay Aquarium	11,436	65	84	969K	786K	110K
34	Doctor’s Without Borders	6,221	67	86	1.91M	1.4M	962K
35	United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees	2,167	70	85	56.1M	1.8M	1.7M
36	Compassion International	11,354	65	83	1.88M	427K	222K
37	Samaritan’s Purse	5,704	67	84	976K	1.4M	936K
38	Smithsonian Institute	811	73	87	13.4M	560K	2.65M
39	The Humane Society	2,743	69	86	5.17M	2.6M	674K
40	Conservation International Foundation	10,985	65	84	582K	361K	133K
41	International Rescue Committee	9,183	65	85	1.09M	600K	387K
42	Mercy Corps	10,688	65	84	3.32M	192K	245K
43	The Trevor Project	9,982	65	85	997K	331K	261K
44	New York Public Library	3,417	69	80	1.74M	274K	2.18M
45	World Food Progam	3,435	69	86	2.3M	880K	1.51M
46	Charity: water	4,758	68	85	424K	361K	1.5M
47	Amnesty International	2,647	69	87	13.1M	1.7M	985K
48	St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital	3,554	69	85	2.14M	2.1M	427K
49	Mayo Clinic	559	75	88	12.2M	1M	1.7M
50	Art Institute of Chicago	7,944	66	85	3.45M	486K	272K

Ahrefs Rank:

Ahrefs ranks websites based on the size and quality of their backlink profile. The website with the strongest backlink profile is ranked #1. Note: if your backlink profile is growing, but Ahrefs Rank is going down – this means that sites next to you are growing at a higher pace.

Domain Rating:

Domain Rating shows how strong a backlink profile of a target website is on a scale from 1 to 100 (with the latter being the strongest). Backlinks from sites with higher DR carry more “weight”.

URL Rating:

URL Rating shows how strong a backlink profile of a target URL is on a scale from 1 to 100 (with the latter being the strongest). This metric has the highest correlation with Google rankings, which means that pages with higher UR tend to rank better in organic results.

Backlinks:

Shows the total number of backlinks pointing to a target website or URL. Not to be confused with number of linking pages, as one page can contain multiple backlinks.

Social Media Likes and Followers

Show the total number of Facebook likes and Twitter followers for the organization.