When you donate to local charities through our directory, your money never passes through us — we don’t collect or hold donations of any kind. Every listing links straight to that charity’s own official donation page, so your gift goes directly to them, on their site, using their own secure payment processor. Browse our directory to find a cause you care about, click through to that charity’s page, and give with confidence knowing 100% of your donation goes where you intend it to.
How to Donate to Local Charities in 3 Simple Steps
Donate to local charities in three steps: find a cause you care about, click through to that organization’s own donation page, and give directly with no middleman in between. Since Local Charities never touches a single dollar of your gift, the entire process happens on the charity’s own site, using their own secure payment processor, exactly the way it would if you had found them yourself.
What Happens After You Give
Once you donate, the charity’s own payment processor sends you a confirmation and, in most cases, a receipt for tax purposes. Because Local Charities is not part of that transaction, we never see your payment details, your email, or how much you gave — that information stays between you and the organization you supported. If a listing’s donation link ever looks broken or out of date, you can contact us and we will check it, but the gift itself is handled entirely by the charity from the moment you click through.
How to Choose Where to Donate to Local Charities
If you already know which cause you want to support, browsing our full list of listings in Browse Charities is the fastest way to find that organization’s page and donate. If nothing has caught your attention yet, it can help to apply the same public-transparency checks that watchdogs like Charity Navigator use: look for a charity that clearly states its mission, names its leadership, and shows recent activity rather than a single old success story.
Every organization listed here has already passed that kind of review before it goes live, so any listing you find is a reasonable place to give. And if there is a local nonprofit you support that is not listed yet, you can suggest a charity and we will take a look.
A Few Things to Know Before You Donate
A few practical notes before you donate to local charities through this directory: because every gift is processed on the charity’s own site, tax-deductibility depends on that specific organization’s status, not on Local Charities, so check their page or ask them directly if you need a receipt for tax purposes.
Donation amounts, minimums, and accepted payment methods (card, bank transfer, sometimes cash apps) also vary charity by charity, since we don’t standardize or process any of it ourselves. If you would rather give a smaller, recurring amount than a single large gift, most listings support that too — it’s simply a setting on the charity’s own donation page, the same as it would be if you had found them without this directory at all.
However you decide to donate to local charities, the important part is that you take that first step. Every listing in this directory represents a cause someone cared enough about to build, and a small gift can matter more there than a large one does somewhere else. You don’t need a perfect plan or a big budget to make a difference — just a cause you believe in and a few minutes to browse. When you’re ready, pick a charity below and give directly on their own site.