I will try to do something nice for a friend or family member
anonymously if possible. This way I know that it goes to someone
I know can really use the help and also someone I care deeply
about.

I also will give to one or another established charity also but I do
check them out and make sure that I agree with how they are spending
the money.

Once I found out that a certain food establishment was throwing out
a large amount of not very perishable items every day. A friend of
mine and I approached them to see if we could instead distribute
their discarded food to one or another food charity. It was a very
frustrating experience. The food charities did not want something
which would have a shorter shelf life and the food supplier did not
want the responsibility of putting out a day old product officially
in the remote chance that someone would claim it made them ill.

So it turned out basically that there was no way to get them to donate
these perfectly good food items to people who really needed them.
For a while we rescued them from the dumpster and handed them out
as a kind of - our responsibility ends when we put them in the
trash kind of thing...but it was an inefficient process.