As this Wise Giving Wednesday will be posted on Christmas Day, we want to thank all those who visited Give.org in 2019 and hope our reports, advice and giving information were helpful in making your contribution decisions. In turn, we hope your generosity will extend to us as well as BBB Wise Giving Alliance is a charitable organization itself. Please consider making a donation to support our work.  

Contributions help us accomplish the following, among other things: 

• Educating Donors and Charities: During the past year, we continued our outreach to various media outlets to provide wise giving advice on such things as disaster relief appeals, helping veterans organizations, or alerting charities to email scams among other things.
• Strengthening Charity Practices: Our evaluative reports on charities serve a dual function. Not only do they help donors verify charity trustworthiness by indicating which charities meet our 20 BBB Standards for Charity Accountability, but our staff counsels charities on what actions they can take to strengthen accountability and amend concerns we bring to their attention. Many initial report findings are changed after the charity implemented the recommended changes.
• Give.org Donor Trust Survey Study: We issued the second edition of the Give.org Donor Trust Report which found, among other things, that only 19% of individuals say they highly trust charities, according to a new study by BBB’s Give.org, but 70% rate trust in a charity as essential before giving.
• Disaster Relief Donor Expectations:  We also released the results of a special survey study on donor expectations about charitable giving for disaster relief activities. It found that only 24% of the public thought disaster relief appeals were very clear. This report also highlighted the role news media plays igniting public concern and action, making the medium an important agent in promoting effective and trustworthy support.
• Advancing Collaboration:  We expanded our work in encouraging charities to consider collaborations to help them accomplish more than any single organization can do alone. A new collaboration tool was launched to help charities share and seek out information about possible shared services and resources.

BBB Wise Giving Alliance is tax exempt as a charitable organization under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Like other nationally soliciting charities, we register to solicit with the appropriate state government agencies across the country. Here is a link to our state government disclosures as well as our latest annual report and financials. We look forward to accomplishing even more in 2020 and would be grateful for any support you provide.  Please consider donating to the BBB Wise Giving Alliance.

Video of the Week

As part of our Building Trust Video Series, we are pleased to provide a video featuring Cheryl Crazy Bull, President and CEO, American Indian College Fund, (a BBB Accredited Charity) which works to help all Native people meet their potential by providing them with access to a higher education. In the fiscal year ended June 2018, the organization provided approximately 5,900 scholarships to students seeking to better their lives through higher education. AICF also provides financial and programmatic support for the needs of 35 accredited tribal colleges and universities, ranging from capital support to cultural preservation curricula.

Recent Reports

We are always working with charities to publish or update reports for donors. Visit Give.org or local BBBs to check out any charity before giving. Our recently evaluated charities include:

• National Disaster Search Dog Foundation
• Physicians for Peace Foundation
• Population Media Center

Finally, remember to let us know by going to give.org/charity-inquiry if you are  interested in seeing a report on a charity not on the list and we will do our best to produce one.

H. Art Taylor, President and CEO
BBB Wise Giving Alliance