If you really want to help the charity, donate to them directly. Don't do it as part of a registration for an event.

The event costs money and it usually uses up a good portion of the registration fee on the event itself so very little goes to the actual cause it's supposed to be raising money for. That why many switched to 'raising awareness' rather than raising money because it avoids legal problems later.

Not all charities are like this. But some MAJOR ones are known to have bike rides, walks, 5k runs, etc that bring in A LOT of money, that nearly all goes towards funding the event itself and not the charity.

Any charity worth donating your time and money to will be able to QUICKLY AND EASILY show you exactly what the cost per registration fee is, how much of that goes towards the event itself and how much goes towards the charity it's supposed to be raising money for. Any respectable charity will be more than happy to provide that information. (And it better be accurate or there is major jail time someone is risking)

Any charity that doesn't make that information readily available shouldn't be trusted. Any individual small charity might not be a scam, but because many are they ruin it for everyone so demand proof of where the money goes.

The Wounder Warrior Project is a prime example of this sort of thing. Sounded like a great cause. But something like 95% of all it's income went towards generating more income, not towards actually doing anything to help anyone. They got hit HARD by the feds over it. I think they are more legit now, but the point is to not just assume a charity is on the level. There are non profits that do this kind of research for you and can give reports cars on what the charity actually does with it's money and how much goes towards the cause it promotes. Those groups go through tax filings of the charities and all that sort of research to give you a reliable answer on if you can trust the group you're dealing with.

MOST charitable groups are on the level. But because of SOME who are shady it's worth checking up on ALL that you want to donate to.

Then you have the honest trustworthy groups who look dishonest because they just don't know how to communicate what they do. I work with a lot of charitable groups to provide benefits for their employees. Some are totally legit honest people who want to do good work in the world but are just clueless on how to promote it. (Do gooder minds aren't always the best marketing minds)

So you have an honest reputable charity who's doing honest work with their donations, but they have no idea how to promote what they do so their website looks amaturish and shady as a result. They just don't think of things like "How do we make the guy viewing our website interested in donating?" They think more like "We hope people will just give us money so we can do good work". We do a lot of free consulting to our clients on that too, where we take our business and marketing skills and help them promote their charities in a way that resonates with their target demographic.