Recently we received a phone call to make a donation to Search and Rescue Charities. We decided to consider it and they sent an envelope with the donation card. Since it was mailed from Washington state and has a return address in Anchorage I decided to do a quick online search to see if I could find out anything. Here is what I found:
1. It is a legitimate business with a license. 2. The top search results from google and yahoo indicated that this organization has called all over Washington, Oregon and Montana claiming to work with local search and rescue groups, when they really aren't. 3. There are some local groups that say they have worked with the charity in the past, but none had formal agreements with the group. And after finding out about the phone solicitations stopped all work with them. 4. They do have a website, but it does not give any specific information on what local search and rescue groups they work with. 5. The Anchorage address is a UPS store and is most likely forwarded to another location in Washington (I learned that this was the case in other states).

I have not contacted any of our local search and rescue groups to see if they are currently working with or have worked with this charity in the past, but felt I should give others a heads up that this may not be the best charity to donate to if you want to support local groups.