Local, citywide, and state organizations:
- Fort Bend County Women’s Center - helps women (donated items here)
- Asian American Family Services - helps Asians with mental health problems (recommended to me a number of times)
- East Fort Bend Human Needs Ministry - helps those in poverty (first volunteered here in my youth with FBCC)
- Cathedral Health and Outreach Ministries - faith-based, helps those in poverty to get back on track (volunteered here with Phoebe)
- Houston Rescue & Restore Victims of Human Trafficking – helps confront modern-day slavery by educating and training the community (Dave works here now!)
Inter/national organizations:
- Human Rights First - helps to protect from violations of dignity and respect
- Women for Women International - helps women
- National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) – helps those with mental health problems (took a free class here)
- WorldWide Water – helps those without clean water (first mission trip in Orange, TX)
- Potter’s House Association – faith-based, helps Guatemalans who live in the dump (trip with my UTEP OT class)
- LifeWind - faith-based, helps lift whole communities out of poverty (found initially as Medical Ambassadors while looking for resources to the mission trip in Mexico)
Charity background checks:
- Article describing how to choose a charity - haha, I haven’t use this, my charities are more sentimental as you can see
- Donor Houston – provides information for Houston-area giving decisions
- American Institute of Philanthropy – with a Charity Rating Guide that describes their rating scale to account for every dollar spent
- Better Business Bureau Wise Giving Alliance – reports on nationally soliciting charitable organizations that are the subject of donor inquiries
- Charity Navigator – evaluates the financial health of America’s largest charities to incite them to be more efficient and responsive
- Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability – rates churches which do not file 990s
- GuideStar – the national database of U.S. charitable organizations, gathers and distributes data on more than a million IRS-recognized nonprofits
- Standards for Excellence Institute – provides a voluntary certification program based on 55 standards
- Maryland Association of Nonprofit Organization’s Standards for Excellence – addresses many of the topics each nonprofit should consider when performing a self-assessment
- North Carolina Center for Nonprofits Standards For Excellence - ditto
