There are charity rating services that assist donors in making these decisions, often rating a charity based primarily on the percentage of revenue that goes toward administrative expenses. “It’s not completely fair … but some programs or services may be more labor-intensive than others, and they may still be doing really wonderful work. Just using that number alone is not fair between organizations.”

“If you see 50% of all money coming in is going toward administrative expenses, you could fairly easily say that is too much. 20% might be OK. … My view — and people will differ with this — even if it’s above 20%, donors just need to ask more questions. This doesn’t mean the organization is bad in and of itself. There may be a good reason why like advertising nationally. The charities that appear on the grocery store payment screens are a bad choice since the store keeps 50% or more.