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The Best Charities for Your Money in Every State
As a team of small-business advocates, we recognize your business supports and impacts local communities. We know you want your donations to go to causes you believe in that use your money to its full potential.
Not sure which organization to support?
Our advice for choosing the right charity: pick a cause you want to support, look for local organizations, and learn how each organization spends its donations. Whether it’s you or your business, you want your money to go to the right places, and not all charitable organizations treat your hard-earned money the same.
No matter the size of the charity or how much it receives in donations, it pays for marketing, salaries, and other administrative costs. A charity might support a great cause but do a lousy job of keeping their administrative expenses low. Some end up being outright scams.
Our methodology
To ensure we found the organizations that use their money wisely, we analyzed data collected by Charity Navigator on organizations in every state. We compared financial information, transparency policies, and public reviews. We also looked at financial, accountability, transparency scores, and administrative-to-program cost ratios. We then assigned our top ratings to the best charities that do the most with their donations across the nation.
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Interesting findings
- The top organizations averaged a rate of 94.9% for contributions that go directly back into the programs.
- The types of causes championed by the most effective charities vary widely, but we found many animal rights, food distribution, social service, and environmental protection organizations.
- Among the charities we examined, the lowest percentage of contributions being used for the program was 63.3%. That means a solid portion of donations were going to business expenses.
- The least efficient charities—those that spend significant portions on fundraising and administrative costs—were also the least transparent and often had warning notices from watch groups like Charity Navigator.
The best charity to donate to in each state
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