Whois lookups used to be useful
If I'm thinking of dealing with a company, charity or other organisation, I used to rely on WHOIS to let me check that the domain really does belong to them. Obviously I'm not after anybody's home address to snoop or whatever, I'm just after a bit of reassurance that a third party (the registrar) was convinced this website owner is the "real deal". Office address would be fine by me (if they have an office). And creation / transfer dates give you some idea how long they've been around (at least on the 'net): "a few years" is better than "since last week". Not infallible I know, but every clue helps when you're trying to figure out how much risk to take.
Nowadays, even the genuine domains of some large organisations will WHOIS-lookup to a "privacy service", which was probably a mistake (did somebody forget to tick the "no we don't want this" box?) - they could easily have put their headquarters address in there, to help establish the domain as genuine, without disclosing anything they weren't already making public on their About Us page. What a missed opportunity.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
