I thought this would be relevant now more than ever (after having secured permission to ask about it) since there are three days left until Halloween, and after that, pre-Christmas-season will have begun (unless you consider Thanksgiving to be separate from that), and people will begin asking for things for Christmas.
I in no way want to imply I shame people for being needy and shamelessly asking for donations. If there are three guarantees in life, it's death, taxes, and people being economically down on themselves or being helpless in the face of their desires (because it's almost the same thing as the first two). It's just a part of life.
Every year, you will see a lot of beggars out and about, whether it's the guy with the bucket of cash and the bell at the store or that person who needs money given to them through "GoFundMe". I run a few services and the latter are quite common to have poured in by people, I find it hard to deny the request. The most common explanations are "my pet is sick", "I am homeless", and "I lost my job". Without a doubt, at least some of these people are telling the truth, but they get buried in with everyone else because there's no way to know. It's no different with homeless people who encounter you on the street, I know some people for years have advocated for some kind of system that separates homeless people based on their specifications, to intense backlash because people with their bias-charged minds think of it as a form of segregation for the unfortunate. Someone I know said they went to the Bahamas twice, eight years apart, and said they encountered the same homeless people taking advantage of tourists by using cosmetics to claim they have gruesome infected injuries and that they need treatment. People just don't know better.
This, in turn, causes them to have no choice but to develop an intense honor system full of competition, as in people will invalidate each others' issues, for example the person with a sick animal might say "your home was hit by a car, so what" and it becomes a rivalry. Some will resort to doing art for people, asking people to commission them, others will resort to scamming people, sometimes asking for people to pay first and then not granting what they promised, and occasionally you get pay-it-forward-esque schemes that are definitely intended to be helpful and address the issue but are very roundabout.
It's not a charged claim to say this happens with official organizations too. It's common for a location to have a dozen active donation organizations, things like GoodWill, the Salvation Army, and Catholic Charities. You will have some that are responsible with their money and some that have excuses in place to collect all the money. And I'm not saying specific names, but often they will defame each other, so all those good and bad reviews you see about certain services reflect absolutely nothing.
Related to all of this, I often have to ask people on an individual level "what makes your plea stand out", as in "if there was a sign you could give that this money you're asking for is going to a good cause, what would that sign be". Some will say they have no such sign but that they can't afford to not receive money just because they have no sign. Some will say they have a sign but it turns out to be something that doesn't prove their point, for example someone once asked for money to send his daughter to school and I asked for a sign, and he gave a picture of his daughter and said "I have this picture of my daughter, that's proof she's struggling to get into school". And some will do things like purposefully be a detriment to themselves to serve as the proof. You'd think one of these days someone would claim they got turned into a newt and needed a small loan of a million dollars to get hospital treatment for it.
It's so frustrating because there are genuinely unlucky people out there but people have been lenient for so long out of fear of causing segregation of people in need and now it's clique-based as a result, the people who have the most luck with donations are the people who have amassed the most popularity, which renders the actual reason someone needs a favor done to be redundant (there was even a famous case a while back where someone on "GoFundMe" asked for a jug of milk and got a thousand dollars). And it's not like someone could be hired to just go to peoples' homes to verify they need money like the people at Guinness who verify world records. So especially in a world where actual major powers of the world have gotten in on all the scammy action, all advice or two cents that can be offered for would-be donors and/or donation seekers would be appreciated, aside from, of course, preferring to donate to people in person, this is not always possible. Maybe something like have something akin to "GoFundMe" where accounts are owned by local towns/villages/suburbs instead of individuals and have the towns do the approval process before adding them to the list, I don't know. Maybe other people have better ways of coming up with a solution. And feel free to ask for donations for your own issues (as well as to pin this, maybe it can help).
in NYC, citizens are encouraged to donate to charities instead of 'panhandlers'. unfortunately some non-profits are 'corrupt' and it's up to your discretion to research your local charities. Personally, I volunteer with animal orgs, and I use food pantries pretty often, they are always looking for donations and volunteers. volunteering goes a much longer way but not everyone has the time
As opposed to up front? I provide more personally, usually ending up doing it through gift cards, offering the roof above my head if they need that (as opposed to saying "here's some big ones, go get one yourself") to those in my community (it's good to do this first), checking on one's health faults using examples of good layperson methodology and addressing them when I see them, encouraging the idea of them trying their best because that's what matters, not the bureaucratic definition of profession, as it always seemed that, in the end, people need humans most of all, not what they give off.