Charity Navigator

Before you give your hard-earned money to an organization you should pop their name into this site for a quick overview and rating. I learned that some of the organizations I was giving to were spending almost half of every dollar donated in advertising and administration fees! Needless to say, the non-profit CEOs making over 150,000.00 a year no longer get my money! It also suggests charities with higher scores or similar interests.

This is a wonderful website for those of us who want to donate but yet are afraid that our money will be misused or scammed by greedy or fake charity organizations. They give star ratings to show you how donate-worthy the charity is. And they have reviews by actual donors too to show you what they think.

I found this website 4-5 years ago and have been using it ever since. They started from simple but thorough investigations of Charities to help and tips for people who would like to donate in a crisis.

I particularly like that they list a company's financials and what they expenses are etc. The premise being that a charity who spends most of the money in 'adminstrative expenses', will not have enough to really make an impact in helping the people most in need, as the donated money is not reaching them.

Most importantly (to me at least), they list how much the Founder or CEO of a charity makes. I am sorry, but if your CEO is compensated $300k to a million plus dollars a year, I am not donating to your charity, no matter how depressing you make your commercials. In this economy, if I am donating, I want to make sure that my money is actually helping the people or animals in need, and not to help pay for a CEO's down payment on a porche.

Also, I really like that they show if a certain charity will give you the opt-out or opt-in option for privacy or if they have no such privacy protections for their donors at all. I have been spammed a lot in the past and with identity theft so rampant nowadays, I feel better knowing if a certain charity provides privacy protection to my personal info or not. At least it helps in my decision making.

Give the site a try, you will be surprised at how many worthy or unworthy (but famous) charities there are out there!