They spot it from far away with its bright colors catching their eyes. It’s a large colorful funnel. It’s a big bucket. Both come with names attached and a small plea to give to those in need. At the funnel, they insert some loose change and watch it spiral around in a mesmerizing pattern until itfinally goes down into the centerwith an unceremonious ping. With the bucket, they also hand over their spare change, but this time it is simply placed into a red bucket. Sadly the bucket doesn’t produce the same “excitement”, but the person is still punctuated by the good feeling that comes when giving to charity.

Both times the person goes along their day feeling like they have donated to good causes, but they might fail to ask vital questions. Where exactly is their money going and is it really helping people? While this might seem like a simple question, it’s actually much morecomplicated than it first appears.

Many charities are created for the simple aim of doing good. Whether that be helping to give food to impoverished nations, providing medical care for those without access to it or something else entirely. While the idea of charities is good, there are inherent problems with many charities out there. Problems that one should consider when they choose where to donate if they want their money to go towards providing the most good. These are problems like overspending onoverhead costs, being ineffectivein the delivery of items or services or even hurting where they are trying to help but fail to give aide.

Looking at overhead costs, it might be simple to say if the charity is spending a large percentage of donations on them, they must have a problem. But in reality, some research must be done to see if that overhead cost is warranted by a need for training or infrastructure and evaluating if the cost is acceptable.

For ineffective delivery of items, some charities may have good intentions with their donation money, but lack the infrastructure and organization to put it to much use so the money does no good at all. For this again, looking more into the charitable institution is needed to see if they are actually providing the help that they are supposed to.

Lastly, it’s important to look at the actual impact of the help that a charity is providing. This is vital because while all donations may seem like good donations, that’s not always the case. For example, a charity may seek to provide something like a water pump for an impoverished village. While this is certainly a good intention, it fails to realize that many places out there simply don’t have the ability to maintain things like this, and within a few years, will simply be in the same situation as before.

In the end, if someone out there wants to donate, researching what that money or item they give will actually do is vital, because sometimes even the best intentions can get in the way of helping those in need.