you can use charitynavigator.org to check legitimate 501c charities financial profile. The CEO salaries of the big ones are what is really criminal! Most of the large, well known charities, spend most of the donations on fund raising and personnel salaries. United Way is one of the worst; they are essentially the Federal government of charities, with most money going to their operations, and just a fraction being dished back out to all the charity organizations they try to pretend they support.