donations

[ariuqloqo]

content deleted by MountainDon
see note in next meg

[ArthurLarl]

The post I removed was to caution us to be careful about which charities we donate money to. Unfortunately much if not all of the "facts" cited were untrue or at best distorted. Certainly some charities are scams or near scams, many make better use of donated funds than some. We should be careful. We should also not spread false information. The content has been floating around the internet since 2005.

I suggest strongly that people avail themselves of the many internet resources available whenever they receive any email that contains a list of "facts" that are supposed to illustrate how corrupt or unfair or dangerous something is. Maybe some folks have a better developed sense of skepticism than many others. I get a more or less regular stream of "alerts" from a variety of friends and acquaintances. I use Google as lot. Copy the subject or a phrase and Google. It took less time to find information that the post was false than it took to write this note. Let's all do our part to kill or limit the spread of junk email falsehoods.

[avociyefaqipu]

You can also use Google to find information on the percentage of funds received that charities use for the intended cause. Lots of real information is available.

[arupictb11]

My wife has a lot of charities she supports and has learned to use Charity Navigator - http://www.charitynavigator.org/

You can search and find a lot of information about a charity including what percentage of collected funds is spent on fund raising (rather than the program they are supporting). See this link for example: Top 10 Charities Overpaying their For-Profit Fundraisers (http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=topten.detail&listid=28)

[atsahqin01]

If you register (free), you canpost reviews and access charity histories and other information.

This site will not have all the little local non-profits that might be doing good work in a specific area.