Scammers and fake charities are just as swift to react using the peaks of the public urge for giving, as real charities (if not faster), and while in times of difficulties it is always easy to find camouflage to their malevolent efforts, this cover is only there to distract people from their real goals of making money on the back of the less fortunate. Thus, it is extremely important to watch out for all the tiny details when you decide to give – especially when you do it in the middle of a bigger movement of volunteer and charity efforts.
As the oil spill from the Deepwater Horizon accident spread the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, many charities and fakes have spread the online world asking for help. So have people willing to grant money to mitigate the environmental and human disaster that is to follow the accident. While there are numerous organizations that are really efficient and transparent in their disaster relief efforts, others are not so much.
To help direct money to charities and organizations that are efficiently taking part of the disaster relief, and are really capable of making an impact – and to help donors avoid scams in the charity business -, the U.S. Better Business Bureau (BBB) have recently published a list of 13 nonprofits working in the Gulf of Mexico that meet the Bureau’s Wise Giving Alliance’s Standards for Charity Accountability.
While BBB is not an ultimate “authority” to judge the efforts of the organizations in question, it seems fair and well-founded to conclude that the charities listed below are amongst the best choices to pick when you choose to donate to oil spill victims (below the names of the charities, we have also shown the section of the given organization’s website dedicated to their efforts in the Gulf of Mexico – where a section like that was available).
For the latest news and details of ABC’s Gulf of Mexico activities click here!
Visit the Latest from the Gulf section of Defenders of Wildlife’s homepage, or visit the organizations blog!
To donate or to get more info on the organization’s activities visit the Gulf Coast oil spill Action Center!
Visit EarthShare’s detailed Gulf Oil Spill page!
Visit EDF’s detailed chronicle of the BP oil disaster.
There are a huge amount of Oil Spill-related info on the Audubon homepage.
For the latest news and updates on the Oil Spill crisis (as seen from NWF’s perspective), click here!
At the moment the whole website of NRDC is all about the Oil Spill crisis.
Not much info and features but the ways you can help NC help in the Gulf Crisis are right here.