How to tell if a charity deserves your money

We are a small charity asking you for money. So it is a fair question why we would hand you the checklist we use to judge other charities — including, if you want to use it that way, us.

The answer is that we had to build it anyway. We give money to other organizations, and we were not willing to do that on a feeling. What follows is what we actually do before a dollar moves. It takes about twenty minutes and it works on any charity in the United States.

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1. Confirm it is real, and that your gift is deductible

Where: the IRS Tax Exempt Organization Search, at apps.irs.gov/app/eos.

Search the organization's name or its EIN. You are looking for three things, and the IRS tool shows all three:

• Eligibility to receive tax-deductible contributions — this is the Pub 78 data. If the organization is not listed here, your gift is probably not deductible, whatever the website says.
• The Automatic Revocation List. An organization that fails to file for three consecutive years loses its exempt status automatically. Charities do end up here, sometimes without noticing.
• Its actual filings — Form 990 returns, and the original determination letter.

This takes two minutes and it is the one step nobody should skip.

2. Read the numbers yourself

The Form 990 is a public document. You can open it from the IRS search above, and it is not as frightening as it looks.

Two things are worth finding:

• What share of total expenses went to programs, rather than to fundraising and administration.
• What it costs them to raise money — how much they spent on fundraising against what came in.

There is no magic number, but there are published benchmarks. The BBB Wise Giving Alliance standards ask a charity to spend at least 65% of total expenses on program activities, and no more than 35% of related contributions on fundraising. CharityWatch puts its satisfactory range — a grade of C — at 56–60% program spending and $34–$37 spent to raise $100. Below those, ask why. Some answers are good ones: a new charity, a disaster response, a cause that is hard to fundraise for. But make them answer.

3. Check what the independent raters say — and know what each one measures

These four do not measure the same thing. Treating them as interchangeable is the most common mistake donors make.

CharityWatch — charitywatch.org. Issues letter grades from A+ to F. It works from the audited financial statements rather than the summary numbers, and it is the most skeptical of the four. If a charity has a good grade here, that means something.

BBB Wise Giving Alliance — give.org. Assesses charities against 20 Standards for Charity Accountability, covering governance, effectiveness, finances and the honesty of their solicitations. It is pass/fail against all twenty — a charity either meets the standards or it does not, and the report says which ones it missed. Among the governance standards: a board of at least five voting members, meeting at least three times a year.

Charity Navigator — charitynavigator.org. Scores out of 100 across four areas it calls beacons: Accountability & Finance, Impact & Measurement, Leadership & Planning, and Culture & Compensation. 90 and above earns four stars; below 50 is zero. Its coverage is the broadest of the four.

Candid (formerly GuideStar) — candid.org. Awards Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum Seals of Transparency.

One important thing about Candid, because it is widely misread. A Candid seal measures how much a charity has chosen to disclose, not how good it is. Platinum means the organization has published its finances, its leadership, its demographic data and its own impact metrics. That is genuinely worth something — an organization willing to show you everything is a different proposition from one that is not. But a seal is not a rating, and anyone who shows you a Platinum seal as evidence of effectiveness is telling you something the seal does not say.

4. Look at who is in charge

Open the Form 990 and find the list of officers and directors.

• How many are there, and are they independent? A board of two, both related to the founder, is not oversight.
• Is anyone being paid, and how much? Paying staff is normal and often necessary. What matters is whether the amount is disclosed and proportionate to the size of the organization.
• Are there related-party transactions? The 990 asks about these directly. A charity renting its office from a board member is not automatically wrong, but you are entitled to know.

5. Look at the ask itself

The way a charity asks you for money tells you a great deal.

• Is there a state registration disclosure? Most states require charities to register before soliciting their residents, and many require the registration number to appear on the ask itself. Its absence is not proof of anything, but its presence tells you they have done the paperwork.
• Is there manufactured urgency? “Donate in the next four hours” is a technique, not a need.
• Does the ask name what the money does? Vague warmth is easier to write than a specific claim, and a specific claim is easier to check.
• Is a percentage being claimed? “100% of your donation goes to the cause” is a claim about accounting, and a charity making it should be able to show you the arithmetic — including who pays the payment-processing fees and the overheads.

What none of this tells you

Low overhead is not the same as high impact. A charity that spends nothing on staff, evaluation or fundraising may simply be doing very little. The ratio tells you how money was spent, not what it achieved, and the two are not the same question.

The most useful question is the hardest one: what changed because this organization existed? Not everyone can answer it. The ones who try — who publish what they set out to do, what happened, and what did not work — are usually worth more of your attention than the ones with a clean ratio and nothing to say.

And our own answers

It would be strange to hand you this and not use it on ourselves. So, plainly:

• We are a registered 501(c)(3) — Undefeated Fund Inc, EIN 92-0285573, recognized as exempt effective 15 May 2025. You can confirm that in the IRS search above rather than taking our word.
• We are registered to solicit in Florida, registration CH85345.
• We hold a Candid Platinum Transparency seal for 2026 — which, as above, means we have disclosed a great deal, not that anyone has graded us.
• We are not rated by CharityWatch, the BBB Wise Giving Alliance or Charity Navigator, and we should not be yet. All three need a filing history we do not have. We filed our first Form 990-N for tax year 2025. Ask us again in two years, and hold us to it.
• We publish who we fund and why. That is the part we can control now.

And our own percentage claim, since check 5 tells you to ask about them. We say that 100% of your donation reaches the causes we fund, and that processing fees are covered separately. That is the arithmetic, stated plainly rather than left for you to work out — a charity making a percentage claim should be able to tell you who pays the card and platform fees, and now you have our answer without having to ask for it.

If you apply this checklist to us and it stops you giving today, we would rather that than the alternative. The point of the list is that it works on everybody.

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The Undefeated Fund is a family-run 501(c)(3) public charity. We raise funds for carefully vetted causes working to end childhood cancer and to meet children's most basic needs, we give away Living Undefeated Charms free to anyone, and we walk with families grieving the death of a child.

Sources, all retrieved 28 September 2026: BBB Standards for Charity Accountability · CharityWatch rating process · Charity Navigator ratings methodology · Candid Seals of Transparency · IRS Tax Exempt Organization Search.