Charities are a lifesaver, for both the donors and the recipients of the donations.

Due to the presence of reputable charities in almost every country, you don’t have to fly to Africa, or Asia or any other location where you want your donations to make an impact. You can simply reach out to a charity that helps people in your chosen location and from the comfort of your living room, donate.

However, this convenience has also made it easy to create many charities, each with their own values and causes that they support. This is why you need to be strategic about choosing a charity. Being strategic allows you to choose a reputable charity whose donations actually make an impact and one that supports a cause you are passionate about.

Here are a couple of steps to help you choose a charity.

Decide your reach

Defining who you want to help is the first task that you should finish. There are millions of people around the world who can benefit from your donations, and the problems they need help with are just as many. This goes to show that you cannot help everyone, and you shouldn’t try to.

As such, you have to first decide whether you want your donations to make an impact in your own backyard, or whether helping people outside your country is more of your thing. None of these choices is good or bad. By choosing, you are simply narrowing your focus, so that you don’t try helping everyone and later get disappointed.

Wisely choose a cause that you care about

Having decided whether you want to donate locally or globally, it’s time to choose a cause you care about.

There are very many charities out there all trying to make their own impact, but they serve different purposes, try to reach different people, and have different goals. This is why you have to come up with a designated charity path, even before you begin vetting charities.

Some causes worth mentioning include;

  • Medical charities that raise money to help people living with disability such as cerebral palsy or diseases
  • Educational charities that help educate underprivileged children
  • Food charities that try to feed the hungry and so on.
  • Animal welfare charities

While most charities have specialized in specific areas, others have broader interests. A good example is Yadezra.net which uses its donations to help feed, educate and raise underprivileged children.

Use a charity engine to find charities

If you don’t already know some charities whose causes you admire, it’s time to do the difficult task of vetting charities. While Google and word-of-mouth will do for most people, you can broaden your search by using charity-focused search engines to aid your research. There are search engines that have huge databases of charities that can give you the basic information you need to know about a charity, where it’s based, and what it does. A single Google search will give you the best charity search engines to use, depending on whether you want to make a local or global impact.

Confirm the legitimacy of your chosen charity

Once you have chosen a list of charities that are in line with your preferences as detailed above, it’s time to take a closer look into the charities you have settled on so that you can ensure that your donations will actually help people and not benefit a few people within the charity.

You can begin by checking each charity’s website to see their core values, the causes they sponsor, how they use the donations they receive, and other details. If you are not satisfied, you can always contact the charity directly through email or telephone to ask them any questions you may have.

Choose what to give

Now that you have chosen a charity or charities that you are comfortable with, it’s time to choose what to donate. This is the easiest step. While most people believe that money is the best donation, that is not always the case. Some charities actually prefer other materials such as foodstuffs, clothes, personal effects, and more.

Lastly, only give what you are comfortable with can afford to part with. It is an unnecessary burden to give too much and leave yourself struggling.