During this time of the year, there are a lot of fundraising drives as people try to share the holiday cheer with the less fortunate. I always try to stick to the more well-known charities since I’m always weary of how certain groups use the money donated to them. It’s unfortunate that we live in a society where we have to worry about that but whatever I can give, I would want to make sure it is being used correctly!

Anyways, I’ve found a great website called Charity Navigator. They rate charities on how efficiently they use their money and is a great resource to use to know your money really is going to a good cause. You can search by charity and see the rating from 1 to 4 stars. There are also other interesting lists like the list of 2009 CEO Compensation for large charities. I had no idea you could get paid 100K+ working for a charity!

They also have a great top 10 lists page including the Top 10 Charities with the Most 4-Star Ratings:

1 Carnegie Institution for Science
2 Cornell University
3 Harvard University
4 Christian Foundation for Children and Aging
5 University of Southern California
6 Breast Cancer Research Foundation
7 Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
8 YMCA of the Greater Houston Area
9 Goodwill Southern California
10 The Scripps Research Institute

I’m happy to see the Breast Cancer Research Foundation and Goodwill of Socal on there!

Anyways, I will be copying my wedding photographer’s idea (Caroline Tran) and will be donating $1 for every (non-spammy) comment I receive on this post from now until December 15th! When you leave a comment, if you’d like, tell me a charity you support and I will pick one charity to donate all of the money to. This will be a great way for me and other readers to learn about other great charities out there. :)