> You are oblivious of the underlying business aspect that any nonprofit requires as they grow.

I disagree with the idea that growing should be part of a charitable organizations goals. It is not a business and should not act like one.

I realized you can't critique how they spend their money from outside.

The most important thing isn't how the money is used but the impact they have on their mission. If a CEO takes 98% of the money but the non-profit ends hunger, is that a problem?

If you want talent, it costs money to keep & retain it. A lot of non-profits had amazing young people working there but those people wanted to have families & move up in the world.

Non-profits that are 100% volunteer are usually less organized & less efficient. Most small non-profits that do pay employees pay very poorly & can't keep great employees which hurts efficiency of their mission.

Sometimes really good opportunities come up for non-profits that could help their mission immensely but they have to turn them down because it would really look bad on their finances when people look at their administrative costs. There actually seem to be black markets out there of non-profits trying to move money around to achieve missions around without hurting their administrative cost to money spent directly on mission ratio.

People need to quit handicapping non-profits. Solving problems cost money & non-profits often spend more time managing accounting than thinking about the problem they're trying to solve.

That's not at all what's happening, though.

But if growth furthers the mission of the charity, which it may well do depending on that mission, then absolutely it should at least consider it.

From the outside as a donor/supporter of that charity and mission, the logical thing for me to care about is how efficiently they can deliver, and are they getting better or worse at that. Which is why you have charity efficiency ratings. Those are hardly perfect, but that's what is important, not some limited information opinions on salary.

If they are doing a good job at it, they are demonstrably in a better position to judge how than you or I am; or almost anyone outside their area.

If a charity today is serving 1000 people well (say by providing food security), is it not better if they aspire to serve 1200 people next year?

That’s what “growing a charity” looks like: helping more people.

You may find the Econtalk podcast interviewing Dan Pallota interesting. He is a high paid charity consultant (450k) and defends his work and salary.

http://www.econtalk.org/pallotta-on-charity-and-the-culture-...

>I disagree with the idea that growing should be part of a charitable organizations goals.

Why not? What's wrong with maximizing the amount of good an organization can do?

> It is not a business and should not act like one.

It is a business, non profits register with the govt and must have a form of liability, especially with volunteer labor.

Hence just throwing canned food at strangers instead.