In July 2018 the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced more than 100 actions (opens in a new tab) against groups that told donors their money would help Veterans and service members. Law enforcement officials and charity regulators from 70 offices worked that sweep with the agency. Six checks answer most of what a donor needs to know before giving, and none of them costs a cent to run. Veterans Transition Center of California (VTC), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in Marina, California, gets run through the same six at the end of this piece.
The order matters, because the early checks are cheap and they settle things fast. The first two are gates, and a charity that fails either one is done, whatever its brochure says. The next three show what the charity does and who controls it. The sixth is the check most giving guides put first, and there are reasons it belongs at the back.
Check one: look the charity up in the IRS database
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) runs a free lookup called Tax Exempt Organization Search (opens in a new tab). You search by name or by Employer Identification Number (EIN). The tool covers five data sets: Form 990 series returns, Form 990-N (the short notice most small groups may file instead of a full return), Publication 78 data, the auto-revocation list, and determination letters.
Two of the five do most of the work. Publication 78 data lists the groups that can take tax-deductible gifts, and the IRS says users may rely on it when they work out whether a gift is deductible. The auto-revocation list holds the ones that lost exempt status by law. That happens after three straight years of not filing a required Form 990 return or notice. A name on that list may have been restored since, and the IRS points you to the determination letter, which carries the date.
Not every Veterans group is a 501(c)(3), and that changes what your gift is. IRS Publication 526 (opens in a new tab) counts war veterans’ organizations among the groups a donor can deduct a gift to. That takes in posts, auxiliaries, trusts, and foundations formed in the United States or its possessions. Since 2025 it also covers federally chartered veteran service organizations exempt under section 501(c)(19), even when their members are not mostly wartime veterans. A Veterans post and a housing charity are built for different work, and the lookup tells you which one you have. VTC does not give tax or legal advice. Ask a tax professional about your own return.
Check two: find out whether it can legally ask you for money
Most states make a charity and its paid fundraisers sign up with a state regulator. The FTC tells donors to check that registration (opens in a new tab) before they give. In California the regulator is the Attorney General’s Registry of Charities and Fundraisers (opens in a new tab). All charitable trustees and fundraising professionals have to register with it and file annual financial disclosure reports.
The status field is the check, and the state gives it teeth. A charity that is not in good standing because it is delinquent may not operate or ask for donations in California (opens in a new tab). It also cannot be listed in solicitations or take gifts through fundraising platforms. If a charity does not fix it, the status moves on to Suspended, and then to Revoked.
The Registry Search Tool (opens in a new tab) is where a donor reads it. You can search by name, by federal EIN, or by State Charity Registration Number. Then download what the charity filed: annual renewal Forms RRF-1, IRS Forms 990, raffle reports, and fundraising reports. Data and statuses may change during the day as filings are processed, so a status you read in the morning can differ by the afternoon.
Check three: read the words in the Form 990 before the numbers
Federal law makes an exempt charity show its exemption application and its annual returns to anyone who asks. The IRS says those returns stay open for three years (opens in a new tab), counted from the due date or the filing date, whichever is later. A charity that will not hand over the last three years is holding back something the law already gave you.
Open the return at Part III, headed Statement of Program Service Accomplishments. Line 4 asks the charity to describe what it did in each of its three largest programs, measured by what it spent. Read that answer for nouns. A strong one names a building, a county, a count of people, and a year. A weak one restates the mission and stops.
Then hold the words against the world. A charity that reports running housing has an address, a phone number, and somebody who picks up. Call it.
Check four: find out who is doing the asking
If the ask came by phone, the FTC says the caller is most likely a paid fundraiser and not the charity (opens in a new tab). It lists questions to ask before any card comes out. Four are worth memorizing:
- What is the charity’s exact name, website, and mailing address?
- How much of this donation goes directly to the program you want to help?
- What else does the charity spend money on?
- Is the organization a charity or a Political Action Committee, where gifts are not deductible?
The FTC also says to call the organization directly afterward and ask it the same questions.
Paid fundraisers have rules to follow, and a broken rule tells you something. The FTC states they cannot call before 8 a.m. or after 9 p.m. They have to give the name of the charity and say they are asking for a donation. Their caller ID has to be truthful, and they cannot lie about how much of a gift reaches the charity’s programs.
The FTC’s guidance for people giving to Veterans causes (opens in a new tab) adds a naming pattern worth carrying around. Scammers pick names that sound like well-known charities, or names built from words like “veteran,” “foundation,” “operation,” “hero,” “wounded,” or “disabled.” The agency tells donors to pay by credit card or check. Refuse any group that will take only a gift card, a wire transfer, or cryptocurrency.
Check five: count the people who can say no
Page 1 of the Form 990 carries two numbers, on lines 3 and 4. One is the count of voting members on the board. The other is how many of them are independent. A board of nine with two independent members runs differently from a board of nine with nine, and the rest of the two returns can look the same.
The BBB Wise Giving Alliance (opens in a new tab), which rates charities against 20 standards at no cost, puts floors under that. A board should have at least five voting members. It should meet at least three times a year, evenly spaced, with a majority of the board there. No more than one voting member should be paid, or 10 percent of them if that is greater, and a paid member should not serve as chair or treasurer.
Part VI of the return, headed Governance, Management, and Disclosure, asks the rest in yes-or-no form:
- Is there a written conflict of interest policy, and do officers and directors disclose conflicts every year?
- Is there a whistleblower policy?
- Did the charity become aware during the year of a significant diversion of its assets?
A column of “no” answers on a page of governance questions is itself a finding.
Check six: the ratio most donors start with, and why it goes last
The BBB Wise Giving Alliance asks a charity to spend at least 65 percent of its total expenses on program activities (opens in a new tab). It asks that no more than 35 percent of related gifts go to fundraising, which it puts plainly as 35 cents to raise a dollar. Both are floors, and a floor is not a score.
In 2013 GuideStar, the BBB Wise Giving Alliance and Charity Navigator jointly called for an end to using the overhead ratio to judge nonprofit performance, and Candid still argues the case (opens in a new tab). Rent and payroll are how a program happens. A charity starved of both delivers less, so a low ratio can mean care or it can mean neglect.
The ratio does earn a place at the bottom of the list, because it catches the bottom of the field. In one case from the 2018 sweep, the FTC’s complaint said 95 percent of every donation (opens in a new tab) went to fundraising, administrative expenses, and the salary and benefits of the man running it. Under settlements with the FTC and six states, that group and that man agreed to a ban on soliciting charitable contributions. A number that bad is visible from orbit. A good-looking number tells you much less, which is why this check comes sixth rather than first.
Seals deserve the same treatment. In that same sweep the FTC said one group falsely claimed a gold rating from GuideStar, the nonprofit information service that is now part of Candid. A badge on a website is an image file. The rating itself lives on the rater’s own site, and that is where to read it.
The six, run on a Veterans charity in Marina
Veterans Transition Center of California is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit at 220 Twelfth Street in Marina. The campus is historic Fort Ord, in Monterey County, and VTC has served Veterans since 1996. Its legal name and its EIN, 77-0431413, sit in the footer of every page of the site, and checks one and two need both before they can start. VTC holds a Candid Platinum Transparency Seal, and that seal, like any other, is worth confirming at the source.
Check three is the one you can run from a charity’s own site before you open a single return. Lightfighter Village is 71 homes, 64 studios and 7 two-bedroom homes, on 2.3 acres of the campus. The food pantry opens Monday through Thursday from 9:00 AM to 11:30 AM for Veterans currently enrolled in VTC programs. Friday hours run from 9:00 AM to 3:00 PM and cover Veterans in the programs, active-duty service members and their families, and VTC alumni. The average stay on the road to self-sufficiency is seven months. Those are countable claims, and countable claims are what Part III of a Form 990 should sound like.
The vocabulary underneath them is in our guide to transitional housing for Veterans. The supporters behind that work are grouped by category on the Our Supporters page.
Run the six on VTC, and run them on whichever charity you were weighing beside it. The six do not change from one organization to the next. If VTC holds up, you can give online. If you would rather ask the questions out loud first, the number is (831) 883-8387 and the general address is info@vtcmonterey.org. A charity that cannot answer a plain question about its own program has answered it.