Better Business Bureau shares tips to avoid scams targeting Hurricane Helene and Milton

HASTINGS, Neb. (KSNB) – As relief efforts continue following Hurricane Helene, and now with Hurricane Milton, officials warn to stay away from scammers that might be using these natural disaster as an opportunity to take your money.

The Better Business Bureau said that a key indicator that an organization you are wanting to donate to is a scam is if they say your donation is a 100% guarantee.

“If someone tells you 100% of your donation is going to go to the impacted party, if it’s a nonprofit organization, that’s impossible,” Josh Planos, the vice president of marketing, communications and public relations with the BBB, said. “Some of that money needs to be allocated for marketing, overhead. That’s just not the way that donation structure works.”

Planos warns that crowdsourced donations are almost always a problem.

“There are so many bad actors out there, there are so many organizations that are simply undeserving of your time and attention,” Planos said. “It’s like playing Whack-a-Mole trying to get some of these organizations shut down and some of them are not even organizations, they’re people masquerading as organizations. So anytime you’re turning to Facebook to tell you where to donate, there are a lot of problems associated with that.”

Another way to catch a scam organization is by making sure there is a physical address listed.

“If it’s an organization that doesn’t have a proven track record or hasn’t been around for a while, that’s something to be wary of,” Planos said. “We’d all like to think that our donations are going to go exactly according to plan but sometimes it doesn’t.”

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