Between now and GivingTuesday on December 1, almost anyone with a phone will be asked to join a charity fundraiser, whether it's a coworker's sponsored 10K or a text pleading for earthquake relief. Scammers keep the same calendar. Federal regulators warned in late August that fake charities spring up after disasters, some borrowing real charities' names, so the eight signals below deserve a check before your money moves.

The sums involved help explain why scammers bother. Giving USA's latest annual estimate puts American charitable giving in 2025 at $617.20 billion, the first year it cleared $600 billion, with individuals supplying about $394 billion of that. A pool that size tends to draw people with no intention of passing the money on.

The signals are ranked by how much each one tends to reveal, and the order may irritate people who give with their heart first. A moving story and a friend's share both land near the bottom. Paperwork sits near the top, since a tearful video can cost a fraudster an afternoon while a clean federal tax record is usually far harder to fake.

1. Start With the Legal Paperwork

The first signal is whether the organization legally exists as a charity at all. Every other check on this list assumes it does, so skipping this one weakens everything that follows.

In the US, the IRS runs a free lookup showing whether an organization can receive tax-deductible donations, and the same tool holds filed returns and revocation records. It lists groups under their official legal names, so a catchy campaign brand often won't show up. Ask for the legal name or the nine-digit EIN and search that instead.

The revocation list is easy to overlook. An organization that misses its required annual filing three years running loses its exemption automatically, and the IRS publishes the names of every group that has, so a charity with a long history can still turn out to have lapsed.

An organization's age counts as well. A group founded last week to help victims of last week's earthquake might be sincere, but it has no record anyone can check, and regulators specifically warn against organizations that appear overnight around a news event.

Most states also require a charity, or the professional fundraiser it hires, to register before soliciting, and a state-by-state directory of charity regulators shows where to look. In England and Wales, the Charity Commission's public register does a similar job and also records any action the regulator has taken against a charity.

2. Prize Draws Should Show Their Winners

Second on the list is proof of winners, and it applies to any fundraiser that dangles a prize. Plenty of causes now raise money through car giveaways and sweepstakes-style draws, and the prize is the one promise in the pitch that an outsider can check. An organizer willing to invent a winner probably isn't being straight about the cause either.

Good operators make that check easy. They keep a public record of previous charity fundraiser winners, with names, dates and often video from the day each prize changed hands. A list that keeps growing over several years is much harder to fake than a testimonial, and one that stops abruptly deserves a question.

How the winner gets picked matters just as much. Credible draws run under published official rules, often through an independent agency. Anyone promising that a donation guarantees a win is running a scam that also happens to be illegal, and that promise may be the clearest warning sign a prize fundraiser can give.

The rules deserve a proper read. The federal statute on mailed sweepstakes requires the mailing to say that no purchase is necessary and that buying won't improve anyone's chances, and it expects the rules to state the sponsor's address, the odds and the value of each prize. Many online campaigns publish the same disclosures, so rules that leave them out are worth questioning.

Some donors dismiss prize fundraisers as gambling with a halo. That judgment seems too broad. A campaign with published rules, an independent draw and a winners list stretching back years can be more transparent than plenty of conventional appeals, which rarely show donors much once the money has gone.

Organizers can borrow the donor's checklist. Official rules that go live before the first entry, with the administrator named, answer most questions before anyone asks them. The winners page matters as much after each draw as before it, since a list that stops updating invites exactly the suspicion a campaign can least afford.

3. Where the Money Is Supposed to Go

Third comes specificity about the money. Vague, sentimental language with no numbers attached is a warning sign regulators have repeated for years, and a fundraiser that can't say what $50 buys is asking you to fill the gap with feeling.

A specific pitch names a program, says what one eye exam or a week of shelter costs, and reports what last year's round delivered. "Help children in need" commits to very little.

Then read the paper trail. Charities above the smallest size file an annual Form 990 disclosing revenue, expenses and executive pay, and a free newsroom database makes those returns searchable back as far as 2001. Twenty minutes with the latest one often says more than a glossy impact report.

Charities that file the full Form 990 and spend more than $15,000 a year on outside fundraisers report it in a section of the return called Schedule G, which lists the biggest firms, what each campaign raised and what the firm kept. When a professional firm runs the appeal, compare those two figures, because a generous cut for the middleman is exactly what a heartfelt video won't mention.

Don't judge by the overhead percentage alone, though. BBB Wise Giving Alliance, GuideStar and Charity Navigator made that argument together in a 2013 open letter to donors, calling overhead a poor measure of performance while conceding that extreme ratios can still help flag fraud. A plain account of what last year's money achieved usually tells a donor more.

Workplace giving leads and small grantmakers can build these checks into their routine. Asking for the latest Form 990 and a one-page summary of outcomes before a cause joins a company campaign takes one email, and a charity that can't produce either within a week probably isn't ready for an employer's endorsement.

4. When the Clock Does the Talking

Fourth, notice the clock. Countdown timers and callers who won't let you hang up and think both exist to shrink the time you'd otherwise spend on the checks above. A legitimate charity will almost always still want the donation next week.

Disaster appeals lean hardest on urgency, and there the evidence cuts both ways. Specialists in disaster philanthropy do encourage gifts right after a disaster. They also point out that donations drop off within days while recovery takes years, so a gift sent next week to an organization that checks out will still arrive while it's needed.

Helping professionals face a particular version of this pressure. People whose work runs on empathy can find a refusal oddly painful. A standing rule, such as giving only to causes chosen at the start of the year, takes the decision out of the moment.

5. How the Fundraiser Wants to Be Paid

Fifth is the payment method. It ranks here only because it tends to show up last, and by the time someone asks for a gift card, the earlier signals have usually failed already.

Cash, gift cards, wire transfers and cryptocurrency are the routes scammers prefer, since all of them are hard to reverse. The sharper warning sign is insistence. Some established charities do accept wires or crypto, but genuine charities take several kinds of payment, and anyone who will take nothing else is asking the way scammers ask.

A credit card or a check leaves a trail. Keep a record of every gift and read the next statement closely, because a one-time donation can turn out to have been set up as a monthly one. US donors giving $250 or more at once have another reason to hold on to paperwork, since the deduction depends on a written acknowledgment from the charity.

6. Matching the Ask to the Real Channels

Sixth, make sure the ask matches the organization's own channels. Fraudsters choose names that sound almost like real charities and spoof local area codes. Some go further and thank people for pledges they never made, counting on politeness to finish the job.

The simplest defense is to go around the message entirely. Type the charity's web address yourself, and if a text invites you to give by replying to a number, confirm that number on the charity's own site first.

Crowdfunding links deserve the same treatment, and the name of whoever actually receives the money should be visible before you pay. If a registered charity sits behind the page, giving through its own website usually avoids the platform's cut as well.

Pages raising money for one person are a separate case, because a person isn't a charity and won't show up in any of the records above. That can still be a fine thing to fund, especially when the organizer is someone you know. Minnesota's attorney general notes in its crowdfunding guidance that gifts to a specific person are generally not tax-deductible.

The same guidance lists several cases where crowdfunded money didn't go where donors intended, including a New Jersey woman sentenced in 2023 to three years in prison over a campaign that claimed to be raising $400,000 for an unhoused man.

7. Someone Who Answers Hard Questions

Seventh, see whether a human will answer a hard question. A real organization names the people running it and replies when someone asks what share of last year's budget reached the program. A reply that just repeats the appeal suggests nobody there knows the figure, or nobody wants you to.

Responsiveness ranks seventh because a polished scam can staff a friendly phone line too. A good answer won't prove much on its own, but a dodge is informative, especially from an organization that was eager enough to call you first.

Watch what happens after a first small gift as well. A trustworthy organization sends a receipt bearing its legal name and eventually reports back on the work, while one that answers with a string of fresh emergencies is showing you where its priorities sit.

8. Why Likes and Shares Sit at the Bottom

The eighth signal, and the weakest, is social proof. Likes and glowing comments cost almost nothing to manufacture, photos of flooded streets can be lifted from any news site, and even a friend's post only proves the friend was moved.

Social feeds are also where a lot of fraud now starts. Nearly 30% of people who reported losing money to a scam in 2025 said it began on social media, with reported losses reaching $2.1 billion, and regulators note that scammers sometimes hack real accounts to target the owner's friends. The August warning made the same point, telling donors not to assume a cause is legitimate because someone they know posted it.

Friends are also the hardest people to turn down, since declining a coworker's page can feel like declining the coworker. A short, specific reply, repeated if necessary, is ordinary boundary-setting with people you care about, and it leaves room to back their next campaign once it passes the checks above.

Summary

If there's time for only one thing before GivingTuesday, make it the lookup. Find the legal name and EIN for each cause you plan to support and run them through the IRS search, then work down the rest of the list for anything that passes. Appeals that arrive unannounced can wait a day and go on a card.

Anyone who organizes giving for others carries a bigger share of the same job, whether they run a workplace campaign, a clinic fundraiser or a prize draw. Putting the legal name, EIN and official rules on the donation page answers most donor doubts before anyone has to raise them.

Anything that fails the checks is worth reporting to the FTC and to the state charity regulator, since the FTC uses those reports to investigate and bring cases. A report takes a few minutes, and it may spare the next person who gets the same text.

Now think back to the last fundraiser you actually gave to. Could you name the organization that legally received the money, or only the story that made you send it?

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