I was planning to donate the couple bucks I had left over from the year to the charity called “San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance”, I was doing a background check on CharityNavigator and they gave the charity full ratings so it seemed good.
Then I stumbled upon the salary section. What the fuck? I earn <20k a year and was planning to contribute to someone’s million dollar salary? WHAT.
Is there a site which documents all charities and flags misuse of funds and such?
How do we know donations will go where expected?
Charity navigator is generally a good source.
If they rate highly there I’ll just search up the organization’s controversies and make sure nothing is currently going wrong.
At the end of the day there’s no guarantee regardless so just donate and feel good about it knowing you did your research.
givewell.org does kind of the opposite. It ranks charities by their ‘efficiency’ and offers multiple funds for bundled donation according to their constantly updated ranking.