Charity Choices

A Resource for Donors

How and Why to Be Part of Charitable Choices

For more than 30 years, Charitable Choices has been helping charities raise more money in the federal government's charity drive, the Combined Federal Campaign (CFC). 

We produce and distribute three guides to CFC charities. We also reach military personnel through our Military Insert and reach federal and military employees in the DC area through our CFC Section in Recreation News.  Our website gives charities a chance to tell potential donors what they do and why their work needs support.

No one else reaches anywhere near the number of potential CFC donors that printed materials reach: more than 696,000 in 2022.  Our Distribution Summary shows how we did this.  Our Distribution Overview explains why our distribution -- much of it done by hand directly to federal and military employees -- is so effective.  Our Impact Report summarizes the data that show how effective being part of Charitiable Choices can be. 

Here are the options we're offering in 2023.  Here are the options for local DC-area charities. 

  • Our attractive, photo-filled CFC Charity Guides look like guides, being organized by the types of work charities do ("Children," "Medical Research"). People use them to learn about charities they can support through the CFC, especially now that the CFC has phased out the "catalogs" of charities it used to print and distribute to employees and military personnel.   We get our guides in the hands of potential CFC donors, as our Guide Distribution Reports explains.  It lists the 119 federal offices, 34 Metro stations and 51 military bases we targeted in 2022.
  • In each guide, in addition to their listing, charities can add display ads or charity stories. Charities can also be part of our "Why should I support your work?" pages.  Each charity gets up to 75 words to answer this question, plus their taglines, logos, small photo and CFC number. This allows charities to explain why their work is so important and needs support.
  • Our CFC Section in Recreation News is distributed to nearly 75,000 federal and military employees, mostly in the DC area. Here is the list of all the federal and military offices to which Recreation News is delivered.  Our CFC Section -- the centerfold -- is in both the October and November issues.  These two issues of Rec News were downloaded more than 250,000 times in 2022. Charities in our CFC Section are also highlighted in a monthly email that goes to about 60,000 federal and military employees. 
  • Our Military Insert, a page of full-color display ads on the inside cover of Military Family magazine, went to 450,000 people at 220 military bases and facilities in the U.S. More than three quarters are handed to people as they enter commissaries on these bases. 
  • This fall we’re offering a new option in the DC area, with the DC CFC now accounting for nearly half of all CFC giving (vs. 29% in 2017).  We’re doing a half page, full color display ad that will appear in a section that is wrapped around the Post on Giving Tuesday, which means it will be seen by every Post subscriber (143,000). It will also be part of the Post's digital “print edition,” which has 185,000 daily readers. (Open only to charities in our CFC Charity Guides.)

Does being in our guides and other options make a difference?

For years we’ve tracked our guides’ impact. Last year we published a report on data for more than two dozen charities that documents the positive impact our guides can have for many charities.  This report builds on an article that summarized some of the most dramatic impact data we've seen, data that involved three related CFC charities that dropped out of our guides in 2014, then came back in 2015.  They went down dramatically the year they left our guides, then went up when they came back.

Measuring the Impact explains the ways we and CFC charities have documented this impact.  It also discusses the many factors that can affect how much a charity receives year to year through the CFC.

The details

Here is our 2023 National Charity Contract.  Here are the specs for our guides, Military Insert, Recreation News Special CFC Section and our website.  Here's the form to use for your charity's page in our site.  Here are the seven questions each charity answers. 

If you have questions or need more information, please e-mail or call us: [email protected] or 240-683-7100.