When you give money to a charity, typically you intend for that money to help the cause, but some charities don’t use that money where it’s intended. Instead, they put it inside their own pockets to spend it on themselves.

Marie Claire, an international magazine geared towards women, reported a case in which a lawsuit was filed against the Coalition Against Breast Cancer, a breast cancer charity.  

The Coalition Against Breast Cancer was accused of pocketing the mass majority of donations that they received over five years, according to Marie Claire.

In a three part series called “America’s Worst Charities,” The Center for Investigative Reporting claimed that less than two cents of every dollar donated to the Cancer Fund of America organization was used for the financial support of patients and their families.

Cancer Fund is the charity to look at as far as how an organization can and will do this. They’ve also done the same with three of their sister charities: Cancer Support Services, the Breast Cancer Society and Children’s Cancer Fund of America.

After spending the money eating at Hooters and making some purchases at Victoria’s Secret, plus a few lavish expenses involving jet skis and cruise ships, the organization’s President James Reynolds was found to be a fraud just like his organization.

The amount of money for salaries versus the amount of money that patients received was reportedly higher, with patients having only received less than 13 percent of salaries in 2011. A lot of Cancer Fund’s donations went directly to members of the Reynolds family, according to CIR.

Reynolds used accounting tricks in cooperation with deceptive marketing campaigns to get away with stealing the charity’s profits, according to CIR’s report.

The CIR’s report also detailed a first person account of a woman whose husband was a cancer patient and only received a package containing children’s toys, paper plates and some napkins from Cancer Fund.

Reynolds was also able to extract funds from his charities because he appointed members of his family to executive positions.

According to CNN, his wife was hired as his public relations manager for the Breast Cancer Society and she hired several members of family from her maiden side for various other positions.

It’s not very hard to make as much money as Cancer Fund’s President Reynolds when you send out your own relatives to collect it and pay them the rest of what you don’t keep for yourself.

Anybody planning to donate money to a charity which claims to fight against breast cancer, or any other cause for that matter, should make sure their money isn’t going towards whatever it is people like Reynolds spend stolen donation funds on.

Among the top five of America’s 50 worst charities, the American Breast Cancer Foundation, Children’s Wish Foundation International and Kids Wish Network were some of the worst, spending as low as one to 10 percent of funds on cash aid, according to CIR.

These are large deceptive charities that to this day bring in amounts of donation money that collectively number high in the millions.

Make sure the charity of your donation is getting its proceeds to the cause it claims to be helping.

A quick Google search of an organization can go a long way. Donate wisely.