Be very careful when you donate for a good cause. There are many con artists who take advantage of tragedy and need to enrich themselves so your donation does little or no good. Some of these “charitable organizations” or fake charities have very similar names to real charities and take in some of their ill-gotten gains by confusing the donors.

Anderson Cooper recently highlighted many of these scams on his CNN show. The story is online if you’d like to read about charity scams or watch the story online. Many of these “charities” focused on cancer.

There are reputable charities that do lots of good so make sure your donation goes to the correct charity. My favorite place for checking out charities is Charity Navigator.