ProSpeak: What Americans Really Need to Know About Charities

So, what's a donor to do?
The heart of the problem is that many self-appointed charity watchdog groups (and sometimes even the news media) are looking for a silver bullet: one statistic that is easy to calculate and can rate a charity as good or bad. As a result, they've become obsessed with the easiest ratio to calculate: the percents of revenue an organization spends on program, management and fundraising. Their simple reasoning is that the more a nonprofit spends on a program, the better it is.