Looking for a nonprofit for endangered animals that uses money responsibly.

[SKL]

I have a daughter who is very interested in endangered animals, especially polar bears.  The past couple of years, I did some things for her Christmas with WWF, mainly because it provided some tangible token/connection for a young person.  But now I'm on their marketing list, as well as those they've sold the list to.  I'm getting tons of marketing crap by email and snail mail that I don't want.  Also they pay their executives a ton of money.  I don't want to support an organization that uses resources this way.  But I do want to support the supposed underlying cause.

Any better suggestions?

[Tanaqui]

Have you checked Charity Navigator? This is exactly why they exist, to tell you how your chosen nonprofit spends its money.

[Corraleno]

My favorite wildlife charity is the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, which rescues orphaned baby elephants, along with other orphaned wildlife, and they also have an anti-poaching unit, a mobile vet unit that treats injured animals in the wild (a lot of animals get speared or snared and would die a slow horrible death from sepsis and starvation if not treated), and they provide watering holes that many wild animals rely on during really bad droughts (like this year).

You can "adopt" an orphaned baby elephant for $50/yr, and you get a certificate plus monthly emails and access to extra "behind the scenes" info/photos/videos about your baby, and they also frequently do Facebook Live things where they answer questions. Their FB page has a link at the top to their website and info about the gift program, along with an incredibly cute video of some of the baby elephants in their care: https://www.facebook.com/SheldrickTrust/

 

[Corraleno]

I just wanted to add that one of the coolest things about "following" the Sheldrick Trust is that each of the baby elephants has his or her own special quirky personality, and they post a ton of content on FB, Insta, and the website, so you really get to know the personalities of all the elephants, and you also get to learn a lot about elephants in general. One of the reasons they are one of my very favorite animals is how much elephants love babies — when a new orphan comes in, the others all make such a fuss over the new arrival, hugging them with their trucks, sticking close by to show them ropes, etc., and the slightly older girls will compete to be the best nanny to the little one. There is one baby boy that some of the older girls, who live partially wild now, were just so madly in love with that they would sleep outside the stockade every night so they could see him first thing in the morning when the babies woke up. And even after the orphans grow up and return to living wild, when they have babies of their own they will make the trek back to Sheldrick to show off their newborns to the keepers who raised them. Elephants are such intelligent, emotional, and amazing animals, and it's just tragic that their numbers have declined by 60% over the last 50 years.

[SKL]

Any whose work includes polar bears?

[Selkie]

4 minutes ago, SKL said:

Any whose work includes polar bears?

There's one called Polar Bears International. I don't know anything about them, but here's their site:

https://polarbearsinternational.org

Here's their page from Charity Navigator:

https://www.charitynavigator.org/ein/770322706

[happi duck]

@Corraleno Thanks for the information!  I just gave to them for the first time but didn't know about Facebook etc