Recently residents of Montana have been receiving letters soliciting contributions to the Firefighters Support Foundation, an organization that appears to support Montana firefighters.  In truth, the organization is not a legitimate organization promoting the welfare of firefighters, but in actuality is a scam intended to raise money only for the scammers who operate the phony charity.

TIPS

Solicitations for phony charities are quite common.  Often the phony charities have names that sound legitimate and it is difficult to know merely from a solicitation whether or not the charity is legitimate or not.  Phony charities related to police and firefighters are particularly common.  Prior to giving to any charity, I suggest you first look into whether indeed the charity is legitimate or not and the best way I know to do that is to go to http://www.charitynavigator.org where not only can you find out whether the charity is a scam, but also how much of your donation goes toward the charitable purposes of a legitimate charity and how much goes toward salaries, administrative costs and fund raising.