Charitable organizations
 

Saw this on facebook, don't know the accuracy

But it was on the internet!

Ah, well...

My personal opinion is to agree about the American Red Cross :( and the Salvation Army :)

But I don't believe the March of Dimes even targets the "needy".
It started with finding a treatment/prevention of polio (President FDR),
and later moved on research on other childhood/genetic diseases.

Unfortunately, the anti-abortion crowd intimidated this organization,
to the point that MofD stopped funding all prenatal research that (might) lead to an abortion.

Publicity-wise, they do try to take more credit than their $ actually funds.

http://http://www.charitynavigator.org/

I found Charity Navigator pretty useful for finding out how efficiently a given charity is. You can also do searches to find new charities to help -- I found quite a few I didn't know about!

We went mostly with Heifer International this year.

Yes, heifer is a good one. I second charity navigator. Their website is a little difficult because they have so much information, broken down six way to Sunday.

It's also good if you can identify a local need. A local charity that you know pretty well already.

We've got AFAC (a food pantry) and ASPAN (a homeless organization) here, and both are extremely well regarded. Both are supported by the county government with grants, by dozens of churches in the area, and also by groups like the scouts. I recently looked them up and about 88% of cash donations go to helping the needy. When you donate food or clothes, then it's 100%. They help a couple thousand families in my community and are in constant need of donations.

Sure, there may be others with greater need in Bangladesh or something, but I know where my donations are going when I give to AFAC. My kids have helped out at the distribution center. I know one of the few paid employees of one of them, and she's not living the life of luxury.