Holidays are an important time of year for many charities, but not all charities are built the same. It is imperative for donors to be proactive in researching charities before donating to ensure their donations will be put to good use. CharityWatch CEO and Executive Director, Laurie Styron, speaks with ABC 7 Chicago.
“It's really
tough because there’s almost 2 million nonprofits in the United States, so the
number one rule of thumb is to be proactive. Because the reason that most people
donate to charity is because they’re asked, they’re reacting to a prompt online,
on social media, to a direct mail letter, to a telemarketing call. And when you’re
reacting you make mistakes, so it's really important to be proactive. Think
about what are the handful of causes that are really important to me, do a
little research. Think of that time you spend doing research as part of your
gift, part of your donation and part of the process. And then once you identify
those efficient charities then give as generously as you can, but don’t react
to every prompt that you get for a donation.”
“It’s absolutely
okay to take the materials or take down the name of the charity, but never give
impulsively, never give before you have time to research the organization.
Another big mistake people make is they conflate, they confuse, the cause with
the specific charity raising money for it. So, if someone approaches you and
they inspire you to want to donate to cancer research, or to you know, the
food bank, that’s great that they’ve inspired you, but now don’t assume that
that particular charity that’s raising money is the best one to donate to. Use
that inspiration and then go home do a little research and find a really good one
and then donate that way.”
“You absolutely
should never take that at face value because there aren’t a lot of rules governing
how charities are allowed to market what they’re doing. So, we’ve seen
instances at CharityWatch where charities will say ‘100% of what you give goes
to the programs’ and really it’s a lot of marketing language and semantics. There’s
no such thing as no overhead. So, you can’t just assume that when you see sad
photos or pie charts or, you know, emotionally evocative language that what you
see is what you get. Sometimes the finances reveal something very different from
what the charity is telling you.”