Editor's Note: Rena Sherwood makes her Celsias debut with a useful post on how to find worthy environmental (and other) charities. Rena hails from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Keep a watch for Rena's subsequent posts!
During April 9 – 11, the Global Philanthropy Forum met in Southern California where the rich figure out where best to invest their tax write-offs. Although attendees to the Global Philanthropy Forum have advisors like rock god Peter Gabriel to help advise them about which charities to help them decide which charities should get their money, what about the rest of us who only have a few bucks to spare?
And how can you tell which charity uses donated money most effectively? Many environmental charities offer a lot of merchandise for sale or give out freebies in their direct mail campaigns. Is your donation dollar going to the charity – or going to make free address labels in order to raise more money for the charity?
Charities Are Businesses
In a perfect world, all charities would be run by volunteers in order to put the maximum amount of donations to use in charity work. However, we're forced to live in this world where no one can afford to work full time for free – not even for a good cause. Charities need to spend about 20 cents or more on every dollar they get on keeping the charity itself running.
Keep in mind that charities are not usually regulated by governments. But all charities are required to register with the government and open their books to the public. By looking at their annual tax reports, you can see where the money is going. And where can you find that out?
Charity Watchdogs
Granted, these organizations that check out the financial doings of charities are themselves charities, but they have free websites that anyone with Internet access can explore. These include:
- Charity Navigator, which has a special section devoted to environmental charities, is the most organized and comprehensive site of its kind. However, it is only geared for American-based charities, as it gets its information from the IRS. Technically, you can check with the IRS yourself for this information, but Charity Navigator translates it into plain English.
- Charity Guide from the American Institute of Philanthropy also has a separate page for environmental charities but is not as user-friendly as Charity Navigator. They use an American school grading system which they update every year. This only names charities that meet A or B standards. If it's not named, consider it not up to their standards.
- Give is the charity evaluation website for UK-based charities and mentions quite a lot of USA-based charities as well. This site also names charities it doesn't like.
- Choice is Australia's most unbiased and comprehensive charity evaluator, done by the Australian consumer welfare group.
Is This A Scam?
Any hot-button issue like the environment is going to attract scammers posing under the name of either an existing charity or a really neat-o made up name. Dead giveaways that the latest charity plea is a scam include:
- Spam, spIM or junk fax
- Telephone pleas (even if you are a member of the charity supposedly calling you)
- Notices on online forums or classifieds
- People knocking on your door
- Car donations
