Quite frankly, while I understand the concept of religions giving, I always felt that charities were demonstration of our governments failings, at least, here, in canada.
If you feel that you should give to a cancer research charty, then it means that our government arn't investing enough in those.
If we should feed the poor homeless, there should be public soup and shelters for those.
Give monney to the veterants? Why isn't government giving them enough?
Don't get me wrong, I believe in capitalism. But there should be a baseline at the bottom for most of the people that charities are trying to fix.