Choosing charities by name alone is a mistake some donors make, and their money sometimes ends up going to less-than-worthy groups. 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. The problem is particularly important now because about 20 percent of giving occurs during December, he says.

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.

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They can help you feel confident that a group you’re donating to deserves your support. Charities differ a lot in how much of the money they raise goes for programs instead of covering the expense of raising money. 

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.

CharityWatch, which uses a letter-grade rating system, gave National Veterans Services Fund an F and the National Military Family Association an A.

“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 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.

We looked for a consensus among all three watchdogs. However, in some cases we included groups that were evaluated by just two. 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.

If the watchdogs haven’t evaluated a group you’re considering supporting, you can research it yourself, Weiner suggests.

Check the group’s website for information about its mission, a list of the board of directors, and its latest financial reports. If the site doesn’t have those details, “it is sending you a message that the organization is not very transparent,” Weiner says.

Among 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. The form provides a lot of information about how much a charity raises and how it spends its money. You also can find 990s at the charity information site GuideStar (free registration required).

Some of the Highest- and Lowest-Rated Charities and Read the Entire Article Click Here:  Consumer Reports