Charity Donations: How to Make Your Donations Count

There are times when we all want to donate money to charities whether it be in times of national and international emergencies such as the Hurricane Katrina and Haiti disasters or holidays. Unfortunately there are many scams that take advantage of this. And some scams could be perpetrated by IRS registered charities. So how do you know which charity you should give to and how?

Recently, I was about to send in a donation to a cancer charity. And although I was not concerned about getting a receipt for tax purposes, I felt confident that the charity was legal because I had seen the IRS tax exempt notice on the back of the donation coupon. However it wasn't until I was warned that it could still be a scam that I checked it out. Sure enough, the charity seemed to be a charity that didn't know how to spend its money on the support that it was supposed to offer. Instead almost ninety percent of donations were spent on raising donations. So I did research before donating to Haiti Relief Funds.

If you want to check on the legitimacy of a charity or check to see how they spend their funds, go to charity evaluators. A very reliable one is Charity Navigator. Charity Navigator is free and gives a grade as well as a rating star system. Some sections require you to register for free though. Simply type in the charity name that you are investigating. You will receive information about expenses compared to profits and how the money is spent, how much money the CEO makes annually, news and more.

One nifty tool is the compare charities tool. This is a great way to decide between comparable charities which your money should be donated to. On a comment left about the American Red Cross, one woman said she decided to donate money for Haiti to another charity after using the compare charities tool.

While it is crucial that money donated to Haiti gets used for humanitarian relief efforts, it is just as important that the donations can be used immediately. The best way for that to happen is to donate money instead of blankets, food and water.

One way that donations are being collected is through text donations. While that is money that the charities might not physically receive instantaneously, the knowledge that it has been pledged gives charity operators the chance to spend money on an emergency like the Haiti disaster that they would otherwise have earmarked for other things.

So if you are interested in giving a donation to a charity, check it out and make sure that your charitable donation finds its way to the people that desperately need it.