A couple of years ago we started focusing on the efficiency of nonprofits. The thing we really focus on is how much do the high-level administrators make; I'm not at all interested in providing a lifestyle to heads of non-profits that is vastly higher than our own. Recently we started contributing to Tunnel2Towers. The head, Frank Siller, is the brother of Stephen Siller, a firefighter who died in the 9/11 towers collapse; the family set up the foundation in his honor. Frank Siller doesn't take a salary for running it.
We stopped giving to a charity that we had on auto-donation for a decade because they insisted on sending us solicitations even though they were getting a check every month. I called them and told them that they were just going to receive a check every month automatically from Fidelity and to please stop spending money trying to get more from us. They said the would but didn't stop. I then sent them a letter saying the same thing and got no response. I finally sent them a letter asking to be taken off their solicitation list. When I didn't get any sort of response I just stopped the auto-donation. They continue to send solicitations. But, we're done with them. I understand that it may be more expensive for them to clean up their mailing list than to just pay for printing and non-profit postage, but I'm not going to participate in that.