Skip to main content

How to Stay Safe from Charity Fraud

By Lisa Lujan, Online Giving Coordinator, Community First Foundation

A few months back I came across an article called "Don’t Get Scrooged," by Mitch Morrissey, Denver District Attorney of the Second Judicial District. Given the fraudulent nature of the age we live in, I’d like to share some of the DA office’s important safety tips.

The first part of the article says that "donors should be wary about giving without doing a little research to ensure the charity is legitimate.”

It continues by saying to "avoid any charity or fundraiser that..." 
  • Won’t provide proof that a contribution is tax deductible
  • Thanks you for a previous pledge that you can’t remember giving to in the past
  • Uses high-pressure tactics
  • Asks for donations in cash
  • Offers to send a courier to collect the donation or asks for you to wire money
  • Refuses to provide written information about itself
  • Appeals to your heart strings, especially patriotism and current events.”
What’s great about using ColoradoGives.org, our online giving website,  is that you can know the following for certain:
  • Every nonprofit on the site is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt nonprofit organization that must be registered and in good standing with the Colorado Secretary of State’s office
  • All donations through ColoradoGives.org must be made using a credit card (Visa, MasterCard, Discover, or American Express) or the information from a bank account (personal checking, business checking, or savings). You needn’t create an account to make a one-time donation, and all payment information is stored with the secure third-party e-commerce payment service providers we use, not on our site.
  • All information about us (Community First Foundation--the nonprofit that operates the site ColoradoGives.org) can be found on our website.
  • All the information about the nonprofits featured on our site can be found on the nonprofits’ profiles. Have more questions than what is provided? Feel free to contact the nonprofits directly using the contact information that can also be found on their profiles.
Additional tips from the Denver DA article include creating a Charity Checklist that includes:
  • Asking for the name of the charity if the telemarketer does not provide it promptly.
  • Calling the charity directly to find out whether it’s aware of the solicitation and has authorized use of its name.
  • If they claim the charity supports local organizations, call the local groups to verify.
When you use ColoradoGives.org you can rest assured that:
  • The charities on the sites have provided us with their legal names and the supporting documentation.
  • If you have any concerns about a solicitation you’ve received you can easily find the contact information of all our nonprofits on their individual profiles.
  • Even if they don’t serve the Colorado area, all the nonprofits on ColoradoGives.org must either be headquartered or providing services with a physical office in Colorado.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Blog 1: Tips on How to Read Form 990

By Angela Bevacqua, Senior Communications Specialist Have you ever been advised to look at a nonprofit’s Form 990 before making a donation? Then you look at it and wonder how to make sense of it all? If you aren’t an accountant or nonprofit administrator, you may avoid the daunting task. On our online giving website ColoradoGives.org, we require nonprofits to provide several documents, including the Form 990 as appropriate, to encourage transparency about their programs and finances. We don’t evaluate nonprofits on the website; we require nonprofits to share information to help donors make informed decisions about giving. I asked Community First Foundation’s finance department to help us interpret this useful document. We will do this in two blogs: Blog 1 shares the basics of Form 990 and Blog 2 delves deeper.  Q: What exactly is the Form 990? Form 990, called the Return of Organizations Exempt From Income Tax, must be filed with the IRS each year by charitable organiza...
1 comment
Read more

Colorado Gives Day: Reflections from Nonprofits

By Angela Bevacqua, Communications Specialist Two months later and we’re still learning from Colorado Gives Day 2010. As we pour through data and listen to the experiences of our nonprofit friends and donors, we gain new insights about fundraising and philanthropy in Colorado. At a recent gathering of our Nonprofit Advisory Committee—a varied group of GivingFirst nonprofits that help us improve the program—we heard these reflections about The Day: Dan Hanley, director of development for Boulder County AIDS Project , said that 45% of their donations on Dec. 8 were from new donors. The agency raised more than $20,000 from 178 donations after a whirlwind of events. Dan said there are limitless ways in which you can promote your agency for Colorado Gives Day. They began soliciting support in the late-night hours of Dec. 7 at a bar in Denver, then moved on to the Denver Diner in the a.m., then several coffee shops in Boulder, and ended with a standing-room-only conc...
Post a Comment
Read more

Meeting Space Celebrity Sighting: Natalie Portman

Valerie Brown, Meeting Space Administrator I met Natalie Portman in the Community First Foundation Meeting Space yesterday. Natalie Portman (L) and Valerie Brown in the Foundation's free Meeting Space Okay, not the Natalie Portman of Star Wars , V for Vendetta and Black Swan . This Natalie Portman is a top-notch meeting facilitator who was working with a group advancing Mental Health First Aid in Jefferson County. Led by Jefferson Center for Mental Health, the group met in our largest meeting room to discuss training community members on how to identify persons who may benefit from mental health resources. Jefferson Center for Mental Health is one of the dizzying array of nonprofits to have come through our doors since we opened the Meeting Space a year ago! February 2016 saw one meeting lasting four hours with six people. February 2017 saw 37 meetings for a total of 250 hours with 799 people through the door! In fact, in the first year we have hosted 269 mee...
2 comments
Read more