1. how much un-needed overhead their expenses consist of, beyond the minimum costs required to run the facility;

2. the dollar-amount of donations that reach the relevant causes by having this type of facility operating, vs. the dollar-amount of donations that would be given to the same causes if this facility did not exist, or if it tried to operate on slimmer margins (by e.g. only being a marine-wildlife gift shop or somesuch.)

My own suspicion is that the answer to #1 is "not much", and the answer to #2 is "a far larger amount." (Under the argument: people don't bother to donate money to wildlife preservation if they're not being actively reminded of the existence of wildlife in need of preservation. That "15% of revenue" still likely ends up as a larger absolute dollar-figure than the total amount of donations to the same causes made by all other individuals or organizations in the area.)

Even if you don't agree with my suspicions, I think those two questions are the only good ones to be debating here.

http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/proceeds.html

Nearly every non-profit in the world has expenses to cover first.

Is that what you're accusing the Vancouver Aquarium of doing?

https://www.charitydata.ca/charity/vancouver-aquarium-marine...

It looks pretty innocent as far as these things go. They do ~$40M in revenue / expenses every year, spend $1.2M on fundraising, and their management expenses are high but not unreasonable. The biggest red flag I see is a large ($15M) loan that's costing them upwards of a million/year in interest.

Compensation seems pretty typical too, there's a more detailed compensation schedule on the Canada Revenue Agency's website but the link doesn't work externally. In short, there's 1 staff member making between $250k-$300k, there are 3 between $200k-$250k, and 6 between $120k-$200k.