Wildlife Conservation Society Bronx, N.Y. If you're reading this article on your smartphone, we recommend that you rotate it to landscape mode to view the table below better. Some of the Highest- and Lowest-Rated Charities You also can find 990s at the charity information site GuideStar (free registration required). The form provides a lot of information about how much a charity raises and how it spends its money. If the site doesn't have those details, "it is sending you a message that the organization is not very transparent," Weiner says.Īmong the documents you should look for, he says, is IRS form 990 or 990EZ, which charities that have total revenue of more than $50,000 are required to file unless they are a house of worship. If the watchdogs haven't evaluated a group you're considering supporting, you can research it yourself, Weiner suggests.Ĭheck the group's website for information about its mission, a list of the board of directors, and its latest financial reports. CharityWatch is the only one of the three that requires visitors to make a donation for full access to its reports, although it provides a list of its top-rated charities and other useful information free of charge. You can find more by going to the watchdogs’ websites directly. Keep in mind that our table below is a partial list of high- and low-rated charities in only some categories. If a group didn't disclose requested information to the BBB Wise Giving Alliance, we didn't include it in our list of high-rated charities, although it may have been included on our list of low-rated charities. However, in some cases we included groups that were evaluated by just two. We looked for a consensus among all three watchdogs. To help you discover charities that are worthy of your support and those to avoid, we've provided a list of organizations the watchdogs agree deserve high and low ratings. “You can get more bang for your buck by giving to an A-rated charity," says the watchdog's president and founder, Daniel Borochoff. To become accredited by the BBB Wise Giving Alliance, the watchdog requires charities to spend at least 65 percent of their total expenses on their charitable missions and no more than 35 percent of their contributions on fundraising.ĬharityWatch, which uses a letter-grade rating system, gave National Veterans Services Fund an F and the National Military Family Association an A. Charities differ a lot in how much of the money they raise goes for programs instead of covering the expense of raising money. They can help you feel confident that a group you're donating to deserves your support. The best course of action before giving is to check out a charity with Weiner's group and the two other major charity watchdogs, Charity Navigator and Charity Watch. The problem is particularly important now because about 20 percent of giving occurs during December, he says. Those organizations perhaps spend too much on administrative costs or are outright scammers, says Bennett Weiner, chief operating officer of the charity watchdog BBB Wise Giving Alliance. If you're planning to make a charitable donation this holiday season, make sure you know more about the group than just the name it goes by.Ĭhoosing charities by name alone is a mistake some donors make, and their money sometimes ends up going to less-than-worthy groups. Consumer Reports has no financial relationship with advertisers on this site.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |