Where to give when making charitable contributions

December is a time when people think about making charitable contributions. Yesterday was Giving Tuesday, a date soon after Black Friday when people are encouraged to spend money to make the world a better place.

But which charities and causes to contribute to? There are some useful websites, like Charity Navigator, that review nonprofits to see which may be the most effective and best run. They often only cover large organizations, and not smaller, local ones. This is where PolicyMap can be a useful tool.

Let’s say you live in Poughkeepsie, and want to give to a local organization there. You can go to PolicyMap, and load data from the National Center for Charitable Statistics from the Add Sites menu.

Those are your nonprofit organizations in and around Poughkeepsie. But let’s say you want to narrow it further. You can choose a specific type of organization to show. Let’s say you want to see housing and shelter organizations. Go to filters, look through the categories, and click on the one that interests you. Now the map only shows those organizations:

There’s a manageable number of organizations you can look into. You can click on the points for more details.

The NCCS Nonprofit Locations data is available only to subscribers. If you’re not a subscriber, sign up for a 10-day free trial to see this and other data that might be useful to you.

Be generous! Happy giving!