Avot328

8:
In his monumental Halakhic code, Mishneh Torah [Matnot Aniyyim 10:7-14] Rambam describes eight ways that one can fulfill the mitzvah of tzedakah. He starts with what he considers to be the ideal way to be charitable and says that each successive item in his list is less ideal than the one which precedes it.

9:
When teaching about how one is to help someone else out of their difficulties the Torah [Leviticus 25:35] says:

This prompts Rambam to determine that the ideal way to give charity is when one Jew helps another to pull himself out of his financial predicament. (Perhaps this is similar to what the old Chinese adage: 'give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.) Rambam suggests several ways that this end can be achieved. One might give the recipient a loan, or enter into a partnership with him, or find him gainful employment. Rambam understands the biblical verse quoted above as meaning that one must support the needy until he no longer needs [to beg from] people.

10:
However, it is not always possible – or even desirable – to act in this ideal manner. So Rambam describes the next possibility as follows:

Rambam reminds us that in the Bet Mikdash there was a kind of tzedakah box which enabled

However, Rambam adds a proviso which speaks volumes about charitable organizations in our own time: one should not give charity in such a manner

11:
The logical progression is that the next item in Rambam's list describes a situation in which, while the donor knows to whom he gives, the recipient does not know who his benefactor is. To illustrate this point Rambam describes how

And he adds:

12:
The reverse of the above is a situation in which the donor does not know to whom he gives but the recipient does know from whom the donation came. Rambam illustrates this situation as well:

13:
The last four items in Rambam's list are concerned with a situation in which the donor and the recipient are aware of each other. Rambam says that it is best to give the mendicant something before being asked; but, of course, one should also give when the beggar importunes us first.

14:
Lastly, Rambam says that one should give charity gladly, with a smile on one's face. But one who gives to the poor unwillingly has also fulfilled the mitzvah.