ROCHESTER, N.Y. – It’s Giving Tuesday, a day we’re all encouraged to open our wallets for a great cause. But how do you know if your donation dollar is really going toward the charity’s mission? After all, we want to know that the organization is using our money wisely. Fortunately, many resources make it pretty easy to check.    

For example, on Monday Attorney-General Letitia James released her annual Pennies for Charity report. It has a database that allows you to look up which charities use professional fundraisers and how much money goes to the for-profit fundraising company versus the charity.

For example, I looked up a charity based in southeastern New York. The database showed me that of the four professional fundraisers the non-profit used last year, none gave the charity more than 50 percent of the money raised. The charity used one fundraiser that took 91 percent of the money and gave the charity nine percent. In another case, the professional fundraiser got 72 percent and only 28 percent went to the charity. And in yet another case the charity lost money, paying the fundraiser almost $38,000.

The experts with Charity Navigator say if you see percentages like this, you need to ask the non-profit why they used professional fundraisers.

“They’re often used at strategic moments to build an audience or bring you, new donors, from an area that they haven’t in the past. That’s okay if it’s used sparingly,” Michael Thatcher, CEO of Charity Navigator explained. “But if it’s used as the primary, that’s super problematic because all your money is going to the professional fundraiser.”

Charity Navigator is a non-profit organization that evaluates charities.

On its website, you can search for any charity by name. For example, I looked up a local charity, The Breast Cancer Coalition of Rochester. Charity Navigator has evaluated the non-profit’s financials, governance, and impact.

Charity Navigator then rates the non-profit from one to four stars. BCCR got four stars.

Charity Navigator says that any organization that gets three or four stars can be trusted with your donation.

Another non-profit that analyzes non-profits is GuideStar. These are all tools to help you rest assured that the charity to which you give your hard-earned money will be a good steward of that gift.