The verification method

The annual return most tax-exempt orgs must file, free to read: revenue and where it came from, spending split across program/management/fundraising, executive compensation, and board composition. You are not auditing — you are sanity-checking: does program spending dominate, does the story match the marketing, is compensation defensible for the org's size? ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer and the IRS's own site serve 990s free; small orgs may file the lighter 990-N, which is itself a size signal.

Only at the extremes, and the sector's own evaluators now say so: starving admin ("overhead aversion") breaks good organizations, and program-ratio games are easy to play. Use ratios to catch outliers, then judge what matters more: clarity about outcomes, financial stability across a few years of 990s, and third-party signals. A 75% program ratio with real results beats a 95% ratio with vapor.

Mostly as everywhere: name-alike fakes riding real orgs' reputations (verify the EIN, not the name), disaster-chasing pop-ups after North Texas storms, and pressure solicitation by phone or door. The EIN habit defeats the name-alikes; giving through an org's own verified site (or a vetted event like North Texas Giving Day) defeats most of the rest.