According to Charity Navigator, a non-profit working to make charities more transparent and accountable, Americans gave more than 350-billion dollars to charitable causes in 2014. Seventy-five percent of those donations came from individuals. KSFR’s Mary Lou Cooper spoke with Kendall Taggart, co-author of “America’s Worst Charities” to learn more about the good and bad of charitable giving in the U.S. Kendall is now an investigative reporter at BuzzFeed. When she researched charities, she reported for The Center for Investigative Reporting.
Mary Lou Cooper has reported for KSFR for over a decade, focusing on consumer issues, health, politics, and more. She is a former US Congressional staffer and remains a political junkie to this day. Cooper has received journalism awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, Associated Press, National Federation of Press Women and New Mexico Press Women. She grew up in Oak Ridge, TN and received her BA from Emory University in Atlanta and her MA from the University of Texas Austin. She holds fiction and screenwriting certificates from the University of Washington.