The New York Daily News reports that Andrew Cuomo, NY’s attorney general, has sued a local “charity” called Feed the Hungry over the handling of its car donation program. The suit alleges that less than 2% of the proceeds of the donation program went to helping the homeless. The suit is part of a wider [...]
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The Wall Street Journal reports today on hospitals taking information gathered from patients and using it in hospital fundraising efforts. Certainly charities should be able to do research on potential donors, but this is going to far! Hospitals regularly gather much more information about us than other charities. Hospitals have struggled with the protected patient information rules [...] The Orange County Register published a terrific reminder about the dangers of “charities” seeking donations through paid telemarketers. Charity scams and telemarketing frequently go hand-in-hand. I don’t give to “charity” telemarketing appeals by paid marketing groups — and encourage you to follow my lead. Read the story. Read our Red Light warning on charity telemarketers. It’s a terrific time to be generous. With demand for charity services up, and donations to charity down, charities need our support now. The Internal Revenue Service provided a reminder today on the ability of IRA owners to make tax-free donations to charities. This special rule expires December 31, 2009. I’m going to quote the IRS notice in full: Columnist Liz Pulliam Weston recently highlighted our Top Tips for Avoiding “Charity” Scammers on her popular Ask Liz Weston blog. Holiday scam season is starting — thanks Liz, for helping to spread the word! Take a look. Join our Serious Givers group, get a copy of Top Tips. Avoiding “charity” scammers is an important part of smart giving. Every dollar scam “charities” take in is a dollar that could instead have gone to a strong charity doing valuable work with the funds entrusted to it. Join our Serious Givers email group now and we’ll send you our Top Tips for Avoiding “Charity” Scammers — a [...] Whenever you are thinking of donating or volunteering, keep our top ten tips in mind. If taxes matter to you, be familiar with and use tax-advantaged ways to donate. Basic concepts include: IRAs and other retirement plans can be terrific assets to give to charity (give the IRA to the charity, the home to the kids). Whenever you are thinking of donating or volunteering, keep our top ten tips in mind. If taxes matter to you, understand the tax benefits of donating, obtain written donation confirmation and keep good records. Whenever you are thinking of donating or volunteering, keep our top ten tips in mind. Evaluate each proposed organization’s relationship and responsiveness to you. Are they responsive to your requests for information? Do the respect your privacy? Do they respect your wishes about mailings and other communications? Do they provide the recognition approach you want? |
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