Giving Compass' Take:

· Food for the Poor, the leading hunger-relief charity, is facing criticism due to speculation that the organization is inflating its total donations to make their '5 percent' overhead seem deceptively small in comparison. The charity claims that over 95 percent of all donations go to programs for the poor, but critics believe that they over-valuate non-cash gifts to make this number seem larger than it is.

· Is the criticism of this charity reasonable? Is Food for the Poor falsely representing their numbers? Should Food for the Poor aim to have 5% overhead?

· Read about the danger of the overhead myth. 

Desperate children living in ramshackle huts. Malnourished mothers cradling gaunt infants in reed-thin arms. Distressing scenes of hopeless poverty in Haiti, across the Caribbean, and in Latin America.

Such heartbreaking images have helped spur a windfall of money for Food for the Poor, one of the nation’s largest charities, which reported disbursing nearly $1 billion in aid in 2017. All of it delivered to “the poorest of the poor” with extraordinarily little overhead, the international relief group says in its appeals.

“Over the last 10 years, fund-raising and other administrative costs averaged less than 5 percent of our expenses,” Food for the Poor wrote on its website in January. “More than 95 percent of all donations went directly to programs that help the poor.”

That’s what church congregations in New England and elsewhere have been told from the pulpit by advocates for the ecumenical Christian group. That’s what hundreds of thousands of donors who contributed cash in 2017 believed, and what the charity continues to maintain.

But it’s a far cry from the truth, a growing number of critics say.

Food for the Poor, they say, greatly inflates its total donations by putting huge and questionable valuations on noncash gifts, like medicines. That has the effect of making its overhead seem deceptively small by comparison.

Read the full article about the charity being challenged on its claim of low costs by Brian MacQuarrie at The Boston Globe.