I upvoted your unpopular opinion but it doesn't have to be that way. You can be involved in the community and get to know local organizations and how they run,

I upvoted your unpopular opinion but it doesn't have to be that way. You can be involved in the community and get to know local organizations and how they run, then give to them with more certainty. In our case, the bulk of our charitable donations goes to organizations we know first hand, which are mainly local. Eg: helping the local preschool, our houses of worship, etc. The most 'remote' org we give to is the Israeli ambulance corps, but we still "know" them in the sense that my wife had been a volunteer EMT there a long time ago. Point being that - there's some positive synergy between your physical community involvement and your "insight" into how organizations in your community function, and a sense of how the money is spent. The fact that one of these orgs got something like $400 via Amazon Smile from us last year is nice although let's be real - nobody is going to stop using Amazon because of this change.