Want a place to check the legitimacy of a charity?
http://www.charitynavigator.org/
“Founded in 2001, Charity Navigator has become the nation’s largest and most-utilized evaluator of charities. In our quest to help donors, our team of professional analysts has examined tens of thousands of non-profit financial documents. As a result, we know as much about the true fiscal operations of charities as anyone. We’ve used this knowledge to develop an unbiased, objective, numbers-based rating system to assess the financial health of over 5,000 of America’s best-known charities.”
Thanks Alex.
Update
U.S. Federal Trade Commission web site advises those making donations for victims of the Jan. 12 Haiti earthquake to read their web page of dos and don’ts:
http://consumer.gov/ncpw/helping-haiti-give-wisely/
and check the InterAction web site for a description of legitimate charities at: http://www.interaction.org/crisis-list/earthquake-haiti
InterAction is the largest coalition of U.S.-based international nongovernmental organizations focused on the world’s poor and most vulnerable people.
Tom Kelchner