Lindt, charitable giving is very personal so it would really depend on why you have been supporting the Eve Appeal. Charities can have a very specific focus beyond ‘ovarian cancer’. For example, raising awareness, medical research, advocacy, patient support. You need to decide which of those is of interest to you or which is most important to you. Or, which charities were most helpful to your mother while she was alive.
Then, search the register of charities to see if their spending actually matches the claims they make. Click on accounts and annual returns. It only takes a few minutes to see where charities spend their donations.
As an example, the Eve Appeal’s most recent accounts are here - . The Eve Appeal has 14 staff and spent £714,000 on them from their total income of £1,300,000. The Eve Appeal’s charitable activities mostly consist of the Ask Eve Information Service which cost a little over £60k, a £75k research grant to Imperial College and more than £250k on ‘information and awareness’ which, I think, boils down to buying advertising space (happy to be corrected if anyone has more information).
As a donate, the red flags you should look for include generally high admin costs, high staff costs, high fundraising costs. Also, pay attention to who they give grants to. Some charities exist to distribute funds to other charities (The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, for example) which is fine. But charities can get rather incestuous. As a donor, you don’t want to donate to a charity with high admin costs who then gives a donation or grant to another charity that takes a cut before a small fraction of the money reaches the researchers or the patients or the carers you wish to support.
If you are interested in supporting medical research in ovarian cancer, you may find that larger charities (umbrella or general cancer charities) are a more effective use of your money. You may also want to consider international charities.