> Much of it is operational necessity. But from a donor’s perspective, only 8 cents of every dollar shows up as direct aid and grants. The rest is invisible

One of my groups of friend groups has a lot of people who work at non-profits that are really dedicated to good causes. They are people who care and wanted to find jobs with purpose. The companies they work for aren’t, as far as I can tell, trying to grift or swindle.

Yet their overall efficiency looks a lot like this chart: Very little money makes it out of the program because it’s so expensive to pay for all of their staff, office space, and meta-activities like doing more fundraising.

From the outside looking in, there is a lot of malaise and inefficiency that just gets accepted at this level. They know they’re taking a pay cut relative to private industry so they, in turn, put in less effort. Many of them invite us to meet up in the afternoons because they’re “working from home” or just leaving the office early. Every time they encounter hard work the solution is to hire more people. Some of them switch to for-profit companies for a while before coming back to non-profits for the laid back working environment. It’s just accepted, to them, that non-profit means it doesn’t have to be efficient or a lot of work.

Maybe my second hand experience is unique to this little bubble I’m in, but whenever I see statistics like this I think it’s more normal than not.