Kelly
Philosopher
I want to repsond to this more specifically.
Yes, it is a great idea to volunteer in local searches. I'm not sure, however, how you could make monetary donation to local LE (law enforcement) and ensure it goes directly to this cause. (investigation of missing persons cases in this example)
It is my strong opinion that the root issues which cause missing persons' cases to go unresolved are:
Lack of manpower in LE agencies
and
Lack of LE training
The only thing that will resolve the first one is if the general public comes to know, understand, and care enough about the issue to be willing to pay enough taxes to ensure that our LE is staffed sufficiently to work missing persons' cases. Unfortunately, I don't see that happening, although that doesn't stop me from talking about it.
The second issue, training, definetely can and should get help from the public. Often, there is little to no money budgeted to training that pertains to our cause. LE agencies admit to just how little time is spent in training on dealing with these cases. In fact, one agency admitted that cadets had 20 minutes of missing person training, and 15 of those 20 minutes was on filling out the paperwork!!
You may want to contact your local LE agency and ask them about their training in missing person training. How much time was spent on it initially? What kind (and quantity) of ongoing training is received in these cases?
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) offers free training for LE. I don't know how many of them take advantage of it. If your LE doesn't do much in the way of training, they should contact NCMEC and inquire about this.
We (Project Jason) are working with a high quality training organization to bring missing persons training to our area. We are paying for two officers to attend this training in October. (More info here: http://www.fvtc.edu/tp2.asp?ID=CJ%2DNational+Center+for+Missing+Adults) We would be happy to bring other LE in from other parts of the country for this training, but that would take individuals and/or corporate sponsors to help make this happen.
There is another excellent group that we'd like to bring in for a training seminar, but we have to find a corporate sponsor to pay the 10K fee.
Who is doing the best work?
NCMEC does alot of good work, however, they do receive upwards of 65 million dollars from the government and other grants and donations. I personally would like to see the public divert funds (in the way of donations)to the smaller groups and search agencies, as both Suzan and I mentioned.
KlaasKids and the Cue Center for Missing Persons do alot of great search work.
The Center for Hope does fantastic work with legislation and prevention in cases of college age students.
The National Center for Missing Adults receives little to no government funding at this time and has had to cut staff to keep going. They are the largest nationally recognized org for missing adults. (There are probably close to 1000+ groups who help with missing children, but only a handful that assisit with adults.)
Outpost for Hope assists with cases of "throwaway" missing. They help the ones society forgot: the missing homeless, drug addicts, mentally ill, etc.
The Rachel Alert Network assists with prevention by providing self-defense training to women.
You can find links to these and other worthy groups on our links page:
http://www.projectjason.org/resources.html
What does Project Jason do?
We assist families of the missing, guiding them in what actions to take and what sources to utlize. We are one of two agencies that we know of that publicly make statements about the use of psychics in missing persons case. (The other one is KlaasKids.)
We have passed legislation in Nebraska (Jason's Law) that created a missing persons clearinghouse: http://www.nsp.state.ne.us/missingpersons/index.cfm
We are working on passing another law (procedural in nature) in all 50 states. We have volunteers in many states working on this: http://voice4themissing.blogspot.com/2005/12/121305-campaign-for-missing-2006.html
We have unique awareness programs that no other org has, such as 18 Wheel Angels, Come Home, and Adopt a Missing Person.
We particpate in public safety events locally, providing free safety information and ID Kits for both children and adults. One of our goals is to get a high tech digital fingerprinting/ID system, but we will not be able to do this on our own.
We are working to bring LE training to this area, and encourage other orgs to do the same in their locale. (mentioned previously)
We are also working on a prototype for a program that is a cross between and Amber Alert and no action at all for missing persons.
Again, I encourage persons to donate to the smaller orgs who do good work.
Thank you.
Kelly
This is a lie.. (I've never emailed or threated her or anyone else) 
