Does anyone have an idea how many charities there are in this country? Does the IRS know? Perhaps it's less important to know the exact numbers than to have some prior knowledge of what perecentage of the money you contribute to a seemingly worthy cause goes into the pockets of the fundraising companies. For instance, according to Charity Navigator (your guide to intelligent giving) , The Committee for Missing Children spends 86.1% of the money raised on Professional Fundraising Fees. The Wishing Well Foundation USA spends 77.9% on fundraising fees.Of the 18 police and firefighter charities evaluated by Charity Navigator 12 attribute more than 20% of their expenses to fundraising costs. Of these, 7 are spending more than 75% on fundraising with one police charity spending more than 90% on fundraising.

Sending a contribution to a charity for, say, a disease such as cancer, will result in your name being sold to every disease- and/or ailment-charity imaginable, with your mailbox being stuffed daily with heart-rending appeals. Learning, for instance that the CEO of the fundraising firm gets more than 40% of the total money raised, can be discouraging. And don't we all pay more for our first class postage so that these charity spammers can inundate us with dunning junk mail at reduced cost?
In an effort to reduce the numbers of charity solicitations received, I, at one point, decided to limit charitable giving to Veterans of the various traditional ones; Amvets, VFW, American Legion, Paralyzed Veterans, etc. In a matter of weeks I began to get solicitations from every conceivable permutation of the word Veteran Organization, not to mention that for every one I contributed to, I would invariably receive a repeat request within days from the same charity. Only to learn that according to a survey by Matthew Kauffman of The Hartford Courant that "veterans' groups are more than twice as likely as other charities to use professional solicitors, which typically keep 70 to 90 cents of every dollar they raise. It's enough to make one decide that, once and for all, Charity Begins at Home. I wonder whether tax exempt status shouldn't be granted exclusively to charities that use unpaid volunteers for fundraising. Providing sinecure jobs for the resourceful unemployed doesn't seem to be a worthwhile objective. IMHO.

Almost all charities use unpaid volunteers for events, fund-raising or marketing.

All charities file tax forms, whether you know it or not, and there is a growing mountain of litigation against them by the Commissioner of the IRS.

This is why it is very unlikely that the IRS will go after churches such as Trinity in Chicago, even though it's patently obvious that they've crossed the political line many times. The Commissioner has too big a work load, and the IRS will only go after high-profile targets that can make a statement for them and deter other small fries.

This is why Wesley Snipes was prosecuted for tax evasion, but every brain-dead liberal who protests income taxes as "unconstitutional" is not.