Adopt a soldier
Question: Could you please write a story about the “Adopt a U.S. Soldier” program? Is this real or a scam? If real, what are the goals and how can people participate?
Answer: Charities and non-profits can be checked in several sources. An organization deemed to be “non-profit” by the Internal Revenue Service must meet very specific criteria and reporting. The Adopt a U.S. Soldier organization, based in Englewood, Colo., is a 501(c)3 (the IRS code that defines non-profits), but the organization is not required to file an annual return with the IRS because its income is less than $25,000.
The BBB Wise Giving Alliance offers a variety of guidelines for deciding if a charity is an appropriate and responsible steward of the donations it receives.
For further checking, the Better Business Bureau has a database of charities that meet the BBB’s “Wise Giving Alliance Standards for Charity Accountablility.”
Adopt a U.S. Soldier was not in the BBB database, which means they either didn’t meet the standards or just didn’t respond to the BBB request for information.
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I began my research career as a University of Virginia physics librarian. Watergate got me interested in news, and I have been at the Herald-Leader for 28 years. I have a master’s degree from Northern Illinois University and an undergraduate degree from Oklahoma State University. It's fun to find that one piece of information that makes a story sizzle. If you have a question, I know where to look. 
My mother was a public school librarian. I earned a bachelor’s degree in music and a master’s degree in library and information science from the University of Kentucky. The Herald-Leader hired me as a news assistant 25 years ago; soon after, I moved to the news research department, where I’ve been ever since. We used to clip newspapers. Now, almost all of our research is online. We've come a long way. 
