Charities help with a wide range of issues around the world and in our local communities every single day. There are many different charitable causes for you to choose from and different organisations who can assist you with your donations may approach the definition of the various causes in different ways. So, for example, the United Nations (UN) defines its seventeen sustainability goals differently from The Australian Charities & Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC) which in contrast defines twenty eight categories of charitable causes with significantly different titles.
The seventeen UN Sustainability goals:
No Poverty
Zero Hunger
Good Health & Wellbeing
Quality Education
Gender Equality
Clean Water & Sanitation
Affordable & Clean Energy
Decent Work & Economic Growth
Industry, Innovation & Infrastructure
Reduced Inequalities
Sustainable Cities & Communities
Responsible Consumption & Production
Climate Action
Life Below Water
Life On Land
Peace, Justice & Strong Institutions
Partnerships For The Goals
There is no right or wrong way to define the causes important to you, there are just different ways of organising the same information. So, for example, here is how the ACNC has chosen to structure their category system for charitable causes:
The ACNC's twenty-eight charitable causes categories:
Children - aged 6 to under 15
Environment
Families
General Community in Australia
Migrants, refugees, or asylum seekers
Overseas communities or charities
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people
Adults - aged 65 & over
Early childhood - aged under 6
Females
Gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender or intersex persons
Males
People at risk of experiencing homelessness/people experiencing homelessness
People with disabilities
Victims of crime (including family violence)
Animals
Financially disadvantaged people
People in rural/regional/remote communities
People with chronic illness (including terminal illness)
Pre/post-release offenders and/or their families
Veterans and/or their families
Youth - aged 15 to under 25
Adults - aged 25 to under 65
Other charities
People from a culturally and linguistically diverse background
Unemployed persons
Victims of disaster
Other
Which do you prefer? I think the ACNC categories are much more specific and have been refined over the last ten years based on customers' (charities and donors) feedback so I think they will most likely have a lot more accuracy than the broader more loosely defined UN goals although they are both good in their ways. I have noticed though that some people and organisations seem to be using the seventeen UN sustainability goals to gain an economic advantage for themselves in different regions around the world which I don't think is in line with the intended purpose of charitable giving and solving the world's problems. In any case, it's nice to see that there are different groups all around the world at least in theory attempting to solve the world's problems by organising our resources more efficiently.