GIVING
CHARITABLE CHECKUP
LINDA STERN AND ANJALI ARORA
Before you make that donation, don’t you want to know how much your favorite charity spends on good works, and how much goes to paying its top envelope stuffers? All of that information is buried in a federal tax return, Form 990, that nonprofits must file. It used to take weeks to get copies of those forms. Now two organizations are posting the forms online so donors can quickly check out their charities firsthand. Right now only about 30,000 of the 225,000 forms are available, but more are posted every day. Curious contributors can check for their cause at qual990.org and make sure their money is well spent. That means at least 60 percent of the budget is dedicated to programming, says the National Charities Information Bureau.
Copyright 1999 Newsweek: not for distribution outside of Newsweek Inc.
