Today is Giving Tuesday — a day to think of those less fortunate, but also a reminder that charities want your money just as much as any for-profit brand, and many use the same polished tactics to get it.

The day itself is a sales pitch: created in 2012 as a feel-good counterweight to Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but quickly dominated by big nonprofits with big marketing budgets. As philanthropy-sector insider Dave Moss writes, it was launched not by beneficiaries but by “representatives of corporate America, the public relations sphere, and/or enormous, already well-funded nonprofits.”

Just a reminder that sometimes it's the scrappiest, more 'unfashionable' charities where your money will go the farthest.

The Wounded Warrior Project has mastered the Giving Tuesday playbook with

See Full Page