I was thinking about the smaller ones run by churches and synagogues. $160K??? Might be justified? Can you email me a link to the organization?

>I don't know what exactly you mean by the faith-based charities but the one that got me thinking (where I found that the principal gets about $160K salary) is run by a minister.
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>I do donate tons of clothes (probably more because my girls like new stuff all the time {g}). But I never have time to look for a specific charity to give clothes so I just drop it into those ever-present donation boxes.
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>And, following on your horror story, I would never think that things like that happen.
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>>This same quandry is one of the reasons I donate materially rather than financially; for example, I like to give diapers and formula to children's charities.
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>>As to homeless shelters, I find that the faith-based ones tend to have the lower overhead because a lot of the workers are volunteers or shelter residents.
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>>On the other hand, there are organizations out there that legally prey on the homeless. I have a close relative who is in and out of shelters and he's told me some horror stories. Here in Florida there's a shelter that takes in the homeless and provides them food and board. In exchange, however, they have to sign over any governmental benefits they get and they have to go out on street corners and sell a "newspaper" that actually reads like North Korean propaganda extolling the virtues of the organizations founder. If the residents don't meet a sales quota they are verbally abused and sometimes assigned penal duties. The founder acts like a fellow traveller but in reality is socking away a ton of money (he hides it well but when I investigated this group I came across tens of thousands of dollars in political donations from this creep each quarter).
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>>I am not going to name this group because they have a nasty reputation of going after their enemies but if anyone cares to know, email me and I'll give you some links that will curl your hair.
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>>>To me (probably as to most people) giving to charities is not only about doing something good but it brings a personal satisfaction (not sure if this is the right term though, but you understand). When I was growing up (raised by my mother of very modest means - she was a factory worker) I remember every week someone (some hasidic Jew) would stop by our apartment and my mother would give them some money. And she would always say that no matter how little you have, somebody has less and we should help. So it kind of got ingrained in me that one must give. So my wife and I give two or three grand every year to various charities. One of the charities, homeless shelter, is not shy reminding us (at least once a week) of the money they need. Recently I looked them up on the Charity Navigator rating and see that the principal of the charity is making about $160K and his wife about $60K. And together they are in about 15% of total expense. Then I looked up another homeless shelter in our area and their principals make about the same (a little less) but because they raise much more money the % of expense is much lower (about 1.5%). So I am wondering, should I drop the more "expensive" charity in favor of the one which puts more money into the programs? Do you think it is reasonable that a principal of a charity makes a lot of money (at least by Obama's standards - I had to get this one in {g}).?