The Dave Ramsey Show appears on Fox Business Network and is also available for live streaming via Hulu.

In last Thursday’s episode (at about the 18:00 mark), a Twitter follower of @ramseyshow asked, “I want to start giving. How do I find the right charity for me and how do I find out if the charity is legit?”

Dave’s short answer: “You have to spend time on it.” He expands a bit, but that’s a great starting point. You need to develop a personal relationship of accountability with charities that you support. Dave goes on to describe his personal giving patterns, which include giving to only a few charities, but doing so “lavishly.”

There are some tools available to help you find the right charity. The standard places to go to get financial information about charities are GuideStar and Charity Navigator. You can get some basic data at these sites, including access to 990 financial forms, for free. The Acton Institute has worked to develop plementary tool focusing on faith-based nonprofits that rely on private dollars called The Samaritan Guide.

WORLD Magazine recently announced the winner of its own inaugural Hope Award for Effective Compassion, Forgiven Ministry of Taylorsville, N.C., “through which volunteers from local churches create days of reconciliation and forgiveness for more than 1,000 inmates, children, and families.” Acton senior fellow Marvin Olasky, WORLD’s editor-in-chief, discussed the three finalists for the award in the latest WORLD Forum podcast (Nov. 3).

In an appearance last month on Huckabee, Olasky described the idea passionate conservatism: “The concept passionate conservatism is that the people in their neighborhoods know best what their neighborhoods need,” Olasky said. “If you had $500 that you could decide how to spend to fight poverty in some way, rather than sending it to Washington, would you know of a group in your own neighborhood that could use the money more effectively than Washington could? So, why do we keep sending the money to Washington in the hope that a little bit of it will trickle back in?”