We are a very small organization, with no grantmaking staff. It's just the two of us getting together to decide how we want to share our wealth.

Because we know there are many others who operate this way, and most of us just make it up as we go along, we are happy to share the process we have developed for deciding where the money should go.  Basically, we have a spreadsheet, with the rows as the organizations' name, and columns for various bits of information about the proposed gift (c3 vs. c4, for instance), and then a series of columns for "scores" on various criteria we've developed based on what we care most about.  At least once a year we go through and re-score the organizations we've given to before, and if we consider a new organization, we score it and compare it to ones we've given to before. Then, we adjust the amount we plan to give based on our overall giving goals and the organization's budget size and request. 

We meet quarterly to review our giving plan, with some giving throughout the year, but the bulk of our funds are disbursed in January.

We are happy to share more about this process with other folks like us. Contact us here if you're interested.