Finding it

With so many of them to choose from, finding your perfect charity can be tough. Thankfully, there are a lot of people out there to help you pick.

• Use us. Use our Charity Chooser tool to read profiles of the country’s top 500 charities. You can also search by the type of work the charity does, and where it does it.
• Ask the experts. Our Experts’ Choices section rounds up the best recommendations from the world of charity research. Different research outfits choose their charities in different ways – so you can decide which methodology best suits you.
• See who’s won a prize. Our Award Winners section picks out all those charities who’ve won gongs over the past year. Be careful, though – some of the awards are quite specialist, and may not reflect what you think is important.
• Find out who’s doing what. The Big Give, a website run by philanthropist Alec Reed, lists charities by the sort of project work they actually do. If you’ve got a lot of spare cash – and we mean a lot – you can also sponsor those projects directly through this site.
• Get some more advice. Philanthropy UK, a do-gooding outfit run by the Association of Charitable Foundations, publishes a (free) Guide to Giving. It’s worth a look if you’re still stumped.

If you’ve found an English or Welsh charity, and just want to make sure it’s legal, look it up on the Charity Commission’s Online Register. If it’s a Scottish charity, try the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator. If it’s an outfit based in Northern Ireland, you’ll just have to cross your fingers: for the time being, the province has no charity regulator.

For more advice on how to give, try Giving to Charity: the Basics.