How Scammers Capitalize on Your Desire to Give to Charity

It’s a heartwarming habit of humanity to want to help people who are struggling. Right now, of course, there is no shortage of a need for help. From historic storms that devastated communities to war torn parts of the world, there are plenty of people who could use aid in one form or another. The holiday season, a popular time for giving, also is on the horizon. Unfortunately, wherever there’s someone with good intentions, there will usually be someone ready to take advantage of that. That’s how we get charity scams. 

The last thing we want is for people to feel too scared to give to charity. We’ll show you how to spot the most common charity scams, how they work and how you can tell legitimate charities from frauds at a glance. 

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Resources To Spot Charities Scams

One of the best ways to protect yourself from charity scams is to know how to spot fake charities. The biggest issue is that the most successful scams will almost always have the trappings of a legitimate nonprofit organization. They often have all the proper certification needed to operate as such. 

Thankfully, there are sites out there that keep track of such organizations. Watchdog and consumer advocacy groups such as the Better Business Bureau have sites dedicated to vetting charitable organizations. The BBB has Give.org, which holds a database of charities and ranks them on their effectiveness and history, showing you their credentials.

Another prominent watchdog group is Charity Watch. It grades charities on a letter grading system based primarily on how much money given to charitable organizations actually makes it to their intended cause. For example, its list of worst charities to help veterans for Veterans Day shows the amount of money each organization received, their listed spending costs and how much money actually made it to their charitable programs. Some organizations spend as little as 6% of their donations on charitable programs.

Several government organizations are also involved in tracking charity scams, as all legitimate nonprofits need to work through official channels to accept donations. This may lead to the only time the average American is happy to interact with the IRS. It provides a handy checklist to spot fake charities. 

Phone and Text Charity Scams

While there are many resources to help people spot charity scams or frauds, they may not always be on hand. This is especially true if dubious charities reach out to you directly. With how much information Data Brokers have collected on millions of people, you no doubt have received a deluge of unsolicited texts and calls from call centers and organizations you never heard of and certainly never interacted with before. 

The only way to win this particular game is not to play. If you get an unsolicited text or call from a charity, assume from the very start it’s a scam. Most legitimate organizations don’t resort to these sorts of tactics to get donations. 

If you are drawn in by a particularly good pitch in a text or call, watch out for common signals you’re being taken for a ride. These can include giving urgent deadlines, as urgency is used often by scammers to pressure people into falling for their bit. Another common sign is the “Thank You” text or email, where an organization will thank you for support you never gave to trick you into giving again. 

United Way, a prominent charitable network representing more than 1,800 nonprofit organizations, provides a quick guide to spotting fake text messages. It also warns of additional usual tells of a text message scam. In one case, offering Target gift cards for answering a few questions and providing personal details.

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Crowdfunding Scams

If you want to get away from organizations with byzantine bureaucracies and faceless interactions, you can help people directly. With the rise of the indie market, independent creators can bankroll projects through the use of Kickstarter, Patreon, or half a dozen other crowdfunding sites. Charity also does this with websites like GoFundMe. 

The premise is simple. If you want to support someone directly, such as a family member who lost their home to a natural disaster, you can donate to their campaign to raise funds. It’s a novel concept, and it has helped a lot of people dig themselves out of bad situations. However, the trade off in helping someone directly is they won’t have the same accountability nonprofit organizations normally have. 

First of all, GoFundMe provides an article on the types of fraud it has identified as the most common on the site. These include fraudulent emails, which you should always verify by checking the address, and phishing scams, where scammers will try to push people for personal information. 

There also are ways to spot fake campaigns. Fake accounts, the ones where there isn’t anyone in distress and they’re just looking for a quick buck, will usually be vague and short on details. Many fake accounts will also use copyright free or AI photos, or even pictures of other legitimate accounts, on their fundraiser. You can spot these through reverse image searches. 

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Counterfeit Charity Frauds

In whatever fashion their scheme takes shape, these scammers are relying on your instinct to help. They use the urgency of natural disasters and life-threatening diseases to keep people from asking questions or getting suspicious.

Just recently, the IRS had to warn people about scams related to raising funds for victims of Hurricanes Milton and Helene. The fake charities usually operate by taking names that sound like other well-known charities. The National Breast Cancer Foundation, one of the largest charities dedicated to breast cancer research, had a doppelganger called the Breast Cancer Society. It siphoned off donations for breast cancer and was shut down for fraud by the FTC.

Other scams involve people identifying with well-known charities to either take money from unsuspecting people or gather personal information for data brokers. In March 2024, the Salvation Army addressed a report of scammers asking donors for sensitive personal information, including Social Security numbers.

The important takeaway is not to feel disheartened or scared to give to charity, but to be careful with how you give. The caller pressuring you for a $10 donation isn’t going to be any worse for wear if you take five minutes to verify who they are.

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William Fewox has worked as a freelance writer since 2017, and his work is featured in literary magazines such as The Aquarian, The Navigator and The Historian. He has also self-published a handful of novels. He has worked as a Social Studies teacher and research assistant in local Florida museums and more recently has worked as an editor for a start-up publishing company. William holds a bachelor’s degree in history from Jacksonville University.