Articles

How To Choose A Charity To Donate To

With over 160,000 registered charities in the UK earning over £52 billion every year, choosing a charity to donate to can be tough. There will be literally thousands of charities that you would consider supporting based on your personal experiences, your beliefs and your priorities.

So, if you’re considering a charitable donation, here’s our guide to helping you choose the charities to donate to.

Personal experiences

Lots of people choose to donate to charities that support causes that have affected them in their personal life. These people are often called ‘repayers’.

For example, if your parents or other loved ones have suffered from a particular illness, you may choose to make donations to charities that support research into this illness. Similarly, you may support charities that your friends are heavily involved in or that you are a member of or a volunteer for.

You will often find that you are more likely to continue donating to a charity (particularly by direct debit) if it is a cause that you are somehow personally invested in.

Small v large

When choosing a charity to donate to, you often have to decide whether you will support a small or large charity. Small charities are often more in need of support to keep their good work going, whereas large charities can often have a more significant impact on changing people’s lives.

Think local or global

Lots of people support charities that do excellent work across the globe. The Red Cross, Oxfam, Greenpeace and Amnesty International are large charities that work to support people across all continents.

However, lots of people also enjoy supporting charities in their local community. Raising money for your local hospice, elderly care unit, animal rescue centre or homeless shelter can have a significant impact in your home town.

Animals or humans?

When choosing a charity to donate to, you will often face the decision of whether to support an animal or a human charity.

Animal charities are amongst the most popular and range from local animal rescue centres to larger charities such as the RSPCA, Guide Dogs or the PDSA. Animal charities and rescue centres often rely solely on charitable donations and many people donate to them in order to help them keep up their good work.

However, other people prefer to donate to charities which support humans. These can be anything from medical charities supporting research into illnesses to Amnesty International, which campaigns for human rights across the world.