After the outpouring

Moreover, the city of New York has been slow in getting names of victims to the Red Cross. Last week, the city finally turned over several thousand names after prodding from local news media.

In the wake of the attacks, many new charities have sprung up. So donors need to make sure those charities are legitimate and that donations are channeled properly, says Bennett Weiner, an official of the Better Business Bureaus, Arlington, Va. He lists certain things to watch out for when giving to New York-related activities:

• Nationally, many groups continue to solicit funds for New York families through direct mailings, phone calls, or Internet appeals. Donors, says Mr. Weiner, must verify the authenticity of such groups. To determine if a group is recognized as a nonprofit by the IRS, go to www.guidestar.org. The website's database contains more than 850,000 nonprofits.

• Be wary of groups that make a generic donation to families of victims. In such cases, Weiner advises donors to find out how much money will reach those families. If you buy items, such as Christmas or patriotic recordings, and sellers promise to make a New York donation, check the contribution level carefully, he says. With cash donations, the charitable group should identify what percentage will benefit recipients. Ideally, that should be 70 to 80 percent or more, Weiner says. If the percentage is lower, consider donating elsewhere.

• Determine the nature of the work or payout to donors, and whether the charity interacts with other charities to get the money disbursed. Such information is important because other nonprofits may abide by weaker standards than the one to which you donate.

One major problem donors face is getting reliable information on how charities actually assist donors.

A recent survey of more than 2,000 people by the Better Business Bureaus' Wise Giving Alliance found that Americans are generally perplexed about how giving works, whether a charity is legitimate (70 percent called it "difficult to know"), and what percentage of money reaches the needy. The problem cuts across both income and education lines, says BBB official Bennett Weiner.

But the biggest concern donors have involves privacy. "People want to ensure that their names are not indiscriminately given out to other charities or other organizations without their permission," he says.

Currently, few legal restrictions prevent nonprofits from sharing donor lists with others, Mr. Weiner says.

Another survey finding: Only 6 percent made an online charitable donation of at least $10. And just 22 percent said they might be willing to do so in the future, assuming privacy concerns are met.

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