How we choose which charities to list
Not every nonprofit that asks for a listing gets one. Before we add a charity to this directory, we confirm that it’s a real, currently active organization with a legitimate track record — not just a website and a donate button. We look for a clear mission, some public history or reporting, and, most importantly, a working donation page hosted on the charity’s own site.
We also check that a charity is organized around a specific cause — education, housing, food security, animal welfare, and so on — so it can be grouped sensibly in the directory. Charities that pass this review get a card on the Browse Charities page with a short description, their cause area, and a direct link to their own donation page.
Why we don’t accept donations ourselves
A lot of charity directories and fundraising platforms take a cut of every donation, or hold your money briefly before passing it along. We do neither. Local Charities never touches your money at any point — when you click through to a charity, you land on their own site and give using their own payment processor.
That means no processing fees taken out on our end, no delay while funds move through a middleman, and no question about where your donation actually went. It also means we can be honest about what this site is: a curated list of good places to give, not a fundraising platform.
Get involved
If you want to explore what’s already listed, start with Browse Charities, where every organization is grouped by cause so you can find something that matches what you care about. If you know a local nonprofit that isn’t listed yet, you can suggest a charity and we’ll review it using the same criteria described above. Either way, nothing about your visit here costs you anything — browsing, suggesting, and giving are all free.
How to Know You Can Trust This Directory
About Local Charities does not invent its own vetting process from scratch. We follow the same public transparency standards used by established watchdogs like Charity Navigator, checking that each organization discloses its mission, its leadership, and where donations actually go. Once a charity passes that review, it appears in our Browse Charities directory, organized by cause so you can find one that matches what you care about. If you would rather compare listings side by side before deciding where to give, the Donate to Local Charities page walks through what to look for.
Frequently asked questions about Local Charities
Is Local Charities itself a charity? No. We’re a directory site that helps people find and vet local nonprofits. We don’t register as a charity, solicit donations for ourselves, or issue tax receipts — those come from the charity you give to directly.
Does it cost anything to be listed? No. We don’t charge charities to be added, and we don’t take a percentage of donations. Being listed is free for legitimate local nonprofits that pass our review.
How is a charity’s cause category decided? We assign each charity to the cause area that best matches its stated mission — things like education, housing, health, animal welfare, or emergency relief — so you can filter the directory by what matters most to you.
What if a charity is removed from its own donation page or shuts down? We periodically recheck listings, and we rely on visitors to flag broken links or outdated information. If a charity is no longer active, we remove it from the directory.
Can I trust every charity listed here? We do our best to only list legitimate, active organizations, but About Local Charities is a small, human-reviewed directory, not a certification body. If you want extra assurance before giving, most charities we list also appear on independent nonprofit-transparency sites, which is worth checking for any larger gift.