Updated below
I recently received an email message about felonspy.com which deceptively tries to make its visitors believe that they can find felons in their neighborhood by typing in their address. I researched this on snopes.com and of course, it's a bunch of malarky. Basically, if you perform another search, you'll get DIFFERENT results and if you go their FAQ section and read between the lines, you'll realize that the results are FAKE.
Since this email was forwarded only to me, I decided not to forward an SWF solely to the sender. I save SWFs for emails where multiple people are copied. And THIS is probably why the sender sent it only to me because the last time she did this, I sent an SWF to all of her recipients.
However, it did make me think that I haven't posted an SWF since the original. So here's a topic you can forward to those annoying people constantly sending you fear-mongering emails.
CHARITY NAVIGATOR
My primary client is a non-profit organization who helps local communities across the country in various ways. They help the homeless, abused children, veterans, ecetera and through them I found out about Charity Navigator.
It is a web site database containing information on most (not all) charities. If you search for a specific charity on their site and that particular charity has been a non-profit for more than 4 years, they will most likely have information on it. They will show you:
- statistics on how much money the charity makes yearly
- how the charity spends that money
- how the charity is managed overall
- how the charity ranks against similar charities
They even breakdown charities into top ten lists such as "10 Charities Routinely in the Red" or "10 Charities Stockpiling your money".
I routinely use this web site when thinking about donating to a charity. We like to donate each year to one or more causes and this site helps me make sure the money we donate is not only going towards a good cause but actually being USED for that cause as promised.
Recently, I searched for Smile Train which provides surgery for poor children around the world who were born with a cleft lip. Unfortunately, due to the lack of time this charity had been classified as a non-profit, Charity Navigator did not yet have information about them BUT did know that they existed and stated they would have statistics in future.
I encourage you to check out your favorite charity today! You can even search for charities by category if you want to donate to a cause but don't know which charity is appropriate or best.
BTW, make sure your SWF emails follow the rules!
