My advice for your employer would be to completely stop giving to charities that mail her these solicitations. Help her get proactive with her giving. She can research charities by cause, mission and rating at www.charitynavigator.org. Help her find charities that she can trust, contact those charities directly and eliminate this costly and invasive mail solicitation that ensures the loudest, and not the most effective, wins.

If she insists on giving to a few organizations that send her mail, she should do the following:

Only donate to charities with a demonstrated commitment to donor privacy. Ask the charities if they have a written policy that states they will not sell or trade the personal information of their donors.

Refrain from giving small donations to many charities. Small donations barely cover the costs incurred in soliciting the gift. To recoup those costs, many charities will simply sell the donor’s name to another charity doing similar work. Charities are much more protective of donors who give large gifts.

Give anonymously. Take advantage of Network for Good’s online giving system (www.networkforgood.org). It allows you to make anonymous donations to any of the more than 1 million charities in existence in America.

Trent Stamp, Charity Navigator, Mahwah, N.J.

Organizations that cry the loudest or send the most mail just might be the most deserving. Monitor the text of each successive letter. If your employer sends a charitable contribution, note if the organization reports on the impact the gift had on its work. If the organization fails to acknowledge the gift yet continues to send the same message, either it is not paying attention or it has a bogus message. If it does not report the difference gifts make, perhaps it isn’t reputable and is playing on emotions.

The best way to give is to seek out organizations that serve causes your employer cares about. Check their annual reports, their websites and other information about their effectiveness. Take the initiative to make gifts only to those organizations. Reserve the right to ignore all other appeals, especially uninvited ones.

Timothy L. Seiler, The Fund Raising School, Center on Philanthropy, Indiana University

It is important to give with your heart–but be guided by facts. To determine if an organization asking for donations is legitimate, search for it on our website: www.guidestar.org. All nonprofits in our database are recognized by the IRS. Our basic search results also tell whether contributions to a specific organization are deductible. There is no charge to use our basic search.

If you do not find a nonprofit on GuideStar, ask to see its IRS letter of determination, or, if it is faith-based, its listing in an official church directory. If the organization is not on GuideStar and cannot produce one of these items, do not give to it.

Another approach is to ignore the unsolicited requests your employer receives and establish a giving plan based on her giving priorities. You can research charities on GuideStar to identify the ones doing work your employer would want to support.

Bob Ottenhoff, GuideStar, Williamsburg, Va.

While worthiness is always in the eyes of the donor, there are places to go to for help. The Better Business Bureau Wise Giving Alliance produces in-depth evaluative reports on national charities. These are available at www.give.org.

To reduce donor mail volume: 1) Decide which charities you want to support and discard the rest. 2) Focus your giving. Twenty gifts of $10 each can put you on many lists. 3) At the time of the donation, let the charity know you do not want your name and address shared with others. 4) If you ask a charity to remove your name from its mailing list, send it all versions of the mailing labels you received on its appeal letters. 5) Register with the Mail Preference Service of the Direct Marketing Association (www.dmaconsumers.org) so that it can add you to the do-not-mail file.

Bennett Weiner, Better Business Bureau Wise Giving Alliance, Arlington, Va

Send Us Your Questions. Are you wrestling with family issues, business governance or succession decisions, investment or estate planning dilemmas, problems related to philanthropic activities or foundations, or a similar predicament? We invite you to email a detailed question to advisorsforum@worth.com.