Ken Stern: What’s Wrong With the Charitable Sector, How to Fix It – Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (WMT), Chevron Corporation (CVX), Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (GS)

Stern: It’s very hard. It is very hard because as of today there is no one single source for finding information. If you’re an investor into the stock market, you go to The Motley Fool, you go to mutual funds and there are lots and lots of resources.

There are 150,000 people whose jobs it is to help individual investors in the mutual fund industry make personal investments. There are less than 100 people across the country whose jobs are to help individuals make donations.

It’s very hard to know. There’s no substitute for doing the work yourself. I often encourage people to band together into groups, sort of like investing clubs — charitable investing clubs — and start sharing ideas and information and doing the work and figuring out what the best charities are.

I will give a shout out, if I can, to Charity Navigator. It’s one of the charity rating services which I was unbelievably hard on in the book, because mostly what they rate are things that are actually irrelevant to charitable effectiveness; overhead and things like that.

I told the story about the American Red Cross, which needs more overhead, so I actually think they’ve been a disservice, but they announced last month after my book was to print, that they are launching something called Charity Navigator 3.0, which is the first attempt by any organization to rate effectiveness.

It’s going to take a couple of years for them to roll out, but it’s something I think everyone should keep their eyes on.

Byrnes: I want to transition really quick. I think you have a unique perspective on radio, being the former CEO of NPR. A lot of alternatives nowadays; you have Sirius XM Radio Inc (NASDAQ:SIRI), Pandora Media Inc (NYSE:P), Spotify, iTunes. Where do you see traditional radio going over the next decade or so?

Stern: It’s a hard question. I’ve been making predictions about the demise of traditional radio for some years. About 10 years ago I said, “It has another 15 years.” Now I’ll sit here and say it has another 15 years. Someday I will be right in saying that it has 15 years.

Byrnes: It’s inevitable, right?

Stern: [laughs] Right.

Let’s face it; no one would build a radio tower now. It doesn’t make much sense in terms of all the options, but in fact there’s a built-in audience for it, a huge embedded audience for it now and the force of habit.

Someday, technology will overtake it. More efficient systems for delivering audio and information, they already exist. Someday they’ll own the habits of American listeners, but I’ll give it 15 years.