Qualified Charitable Organization

Okay, you know March of Dimes. You know The Red Cross. You know The General Scholarship Fund of pretty much every major university. They're all charities for tax purposes.

But what is "qualified" here? Like...is someone making a quality assessment as to how effective they are at solving whatever ills they purport to solve?

No. "Qualified" in this sense means that they are qualified for donors to deduct the value of that donation from their taxes, more or less. When a charity is qualified, it means that it has gone through the govenrment hoop-jumping exercise to be clearly identified as legit. Honest. Not a scammer. An actual functioning organism that actually performs valuable work. And in having that hurdle cleared, the charity gets to be on the "buy" deck of a whole load of charities, both large and small, who regularly donate money to them.

So the hoop-jumping is worth it. And yes, it is sad that we have to have this "qualified" thing in there at all. But way too many scummy, bad actors appear with hands out, stealing money from the poor, the frail, the meek. Maybe we can spend a few of those donor dollars to put them in jail for a very, very long time.