Reply To: Honest Tzedakah

I understand that tzedakose often need to cover overhead, and I’m perfectly comfortable donating to such places, even if not 100% of every dollar goes to help the poor. But I think we should distinguish between organizations where overhead is 5 or 10%, maybe even a bit higher, and organizations in which it’s over 50%. I hope that even zahavasdad will agree that such a distinction is reasonable. There is at least one organization — and it regularly advertises on this site — that spends over 50 cents of every dollar on overhead (employees, advertising, prizes, etc) according to their published 990’s, available on sites such as charitynavigator. Of course people working there need to make a parnassah, and of course these mega-raffles end up bringing them more money to help people. But in my mind that’s difficult to justify as wholesome honest tzedakah.