many charities keep 80-90% of the incoming money for "operational costs", which really what they mean by that is payments to the top executives, pittance of salaries to the lower workers who organize volunteer labor, and a shitload spent on extravagant events designed to bring in more money for more extravagant events for the top executives.

and then they hide it all in PR releases with weasel words and accounting tricks. for example, Red Cross raised something $500m with the haitian earthquakes. they claim they spent over 90% on aid, but by their own admissions, it doesn't even crack $350m, they refuse any sort of accounting on the projects, and the spending is wildly more than what any normal estimate would be for those levels of services, even in a disaster zone. whistleblowers admitted tons of money is spent on marketing donation requests, and then they stockpile it into the endowment, only spending dividends. this is how their CEO gets paid over a half million in salary every year, on top of all the ridiculous perks.