>I know that Americans are very charitable people and give a lot. But I always wonder where these money goes. Obviously one wants their charity to go to the "cause" and not to the expense or fund raising. But I realize that one cannot work without the other. Many years ago I had a CPA who was doing my tax and once we got to talk about what else he does (beside tax returns) he said that he runs a charity. I never asked him what charity he runs although would be interesting. I fired him later though (for a different reason).

FWIW, Marshal and I are the co-presidents of a non-profit here (www.hebrewfreeloanphila.org). Our group is entirely volunteer-operated and runs on about $3K a year (most of it for credit reports). While we're doing good work, we could actually help a lot more people if we had an employee. Our board handles day-to-day operations quite well, but with only volunteers, we don't manage to do the long-term things that would build the organization.

Tamar