Top 10 Charities You Should NEVER Donate To
Donating to charity is one of the most fulfilling and rewarding experiences in the modern-day, but this experience can often be diminished due to the fact that many charities only exist as a way to scam people out of their money. This list covers 10 of the worst charities that should never be donated to, either because donations are used irresponsibly or maliciously.
Women to Women Breast Cancer Foundation
Breast cancer is a horrible disease that affects thousands of women every year, but donating to the Women to Women Breast Cancer Foundation is one of the worst ways to support these struggling women. Nearly 90% of the income brought in by this charity is given to solicitors, with the remaining being used for mammograms and relief funds.
Firefighters Charitable Foundation
The common theme in this article is that the problem with most of these charities is that the majority of donation money goes to investors and not victims. The Firefighters Charitable Foundation is meant to help burn victims, but once again less than 10% of donations go towards actually helping these people.
Kids Wish Network
This charity is designed to serve as a knock-off Make A Wish Foundation (an actually good charity) and claims to help sick children. Of course, this isn’t very accurate since only about 2.5% of their income goes towards this goal.
Project Cure (Florida Branch)
Project Cure is a charity claiming to raise awareness about some of the biggest diseases of the day, but the Florida branch of the organization is well-known for using almost none of its money to actually achieve this goal. It is important to note that some of the other branches, including the one in Ohio, are much more reputable and trustworthy.
Noah’s Lost Ark
This is an Ohio based wildlife conservation organization, and while on a normal visit, it may seem like a good program, it is rated very low by CharityNavigator for a multitude of reasons. The main problem being the lack of income transparency as well as the safety issues at the park. This may not be the worst charity to donate to, but there are far better options out there.
American Cancer Society
The American Cancer Society in and of itself may not be a bad charity, but the telemarketers they use through InfoCision, an Ohio-based marketing company certainly hurt the reputation of the organization. Virtually none of the money raised through InfoCision actually goes towards helping cancer patients, making a donation through this medium almost a complete waste, especially considering all of the more trustworthy cancer charities out there.
Youth Development Fund
This charity, meant to help promote childhood development and education, puts only 1% of its income towards direct cash aid towards these goals, making it one of the worst on the list in that aspect.
Find the Children
Locating missing children and preventing childhood abuse are noble goals, but with a lack of funding transparency and a score of 32 on Charity Navigator, this organization is most definitely not a good use of money.
National Veteran’s Service Fund
Most of the charities on this list are pretty bad about using their money to actually help people, but they at least do actually donate money. That’s more than can be said about the National Veteran’s Service Fund, whose only IRS donation is a small amount given to a health clinic specializing in birth defects. It’s not entirely clear where the rest of the money goes, but it’s pretty obvious that it is not being used to help veterans.
527 Groups
A 527 group is a type of organization that raises money for political purposes. The main reason these should be avoided is that the government has absolutely no control over them, meaning that most of these organizations are laden with corruption and deception. For more information, check out this article from Open Secrets.
