Good question. One that an alum had asked me recently when we both received a message from our Alma Mater seeking donations for PPE.

I’ll tell you what I told him.

I don’t know any time- and effort-efficient way to find out if a charity donation link is genuine or not. So I don’t bother to find out.

I donate if the fundraiser fulfills the following three conditions:

  1. I want to support the cause
  2. I received the notification for fundraise from a trusted source
  3. The donation process is frictionless.

Re. #3, I recently came across two campaigns.

One where I had to complete a long form and crack a reCAPTCHA to make the donation. It was terribly painful.

And the other where I could make the donation in two taps after scanning a QR code.

Needless to say, I bailed out from the first campaign and made a donation to the second campaign.

While on the subject, I recall a fundraiser run by the German newspaper BILD where we simply had to call a certain telephone number and EUR 5 donation was debited to our mobile phone bill. The donation process was so frictionless that I remember this campaign even after 20 years.