If you want to help the poor don't give to a charity. Eat your meals in restaurants and tip well.

Charities are notorious for the amount of waste. It can be that for every dollar you give to a charity that only a penny goes to the people in need after your dollar filters through all of the overhead costs for the charity's infrastructure. You only feel good about yourself for giving to a charity because you don't feel bad about yourself for being a sucker because you can't see it. The waste that happens after your throw a wad of cash over the wall is out of sight. In contrast you have probably worked in a restaurant at some point when you were down on your luck and you know that there is no waste there. Restaurants run notoriously lean ships, heavily completing on price, without room for slack and extravagance given that it is a low margin business. They don't even pay their employees properly and instead rely on the societal convention of tipping to fill in the difference. They can't just add a dollar to the prices of everything on the menu and introduce a fat factor as they have to complete with all of the other restaurants in an unsparing slugfest of capitalism that has no counterpart in the world of charities. The service worker is the face of the modern poor in America. Everyone who is working in a restaurant has the challenge upon them to somehow get out. Some of us make peace with it and stay because we don't see a way out. Others amongst us stay without making any peace at all. We are just stuck there. More common is an all too long five year stint in the restaurant life while you are trying to get through college or something. You will find that years on end in limbo on your feet everyday as a fate befalling quite a few of us. The people in restaurants may likely have addiction issues to keep them sane (and unfortunately keep them where they are in life) but these individuals should not be seen as akin to the stereotype of the drunk homeless bum who just doesn’t want to work. These individuals are working their asses off. Everyone knows it. Give your spare money to them, not the drunk homeless bum who just doesn't want to work or some parasitic charity. Tip five dollars on top of a seventeen dollar meal at the Olive Garden. This is how you can help average Joe. The money you give won't be wasted frivolously. Restaurant workers don't have some extra cash to just blow on manicures and massages. Maybe they'll own a dog and you'll end up paying for some dog food. That's the extent of the waste. It could be that a single mom has a child instead of the dog. Then there is no waste at all.