When It Comes to Donations, Is It Possible to Have Too Much?

Holden Karnofsky, co-founder of the charity-evaluation group GiveWell, says there’s an “essential question” that donors aren’t asking nonprofit groups.

The question, says Mr. Karnofsky, is whether a charity actually needs more money. Will more money lead to better programs that reach more people? Or do some charities have great programs that they cannot — or will not — expand, even if they get more financial support?

In one blog post, he cites the example of Smile Train, the organization that provides cleft-lip and cleft-palate surgeries to poor children. Mr. Karnofsky suggests that Smile Train’s core program has more money than doctors and that most of the money the group raises thus goes to programs other than its primary one.

Mr. Karnofsky says, too, that aid groups in Haiti may not need more financial support. He examines data collected by The Chronicle and estimates that about 38 percent of the money raised for Haiti has been spent so far.

“We don’t believe that spending money slowly indicates irresponsibility,” he says. “However, we do feel that it’s important for donors to note how much of their donations are likely paying for longer-term, as opposed to immediate, relief because this has implications for what one should look for in a disaster charity in the future.”

Mr. Karnofsky also raises the question of whether there is “room for more funding” in a discussion of the microfinance group Unitus. The charity announced recently that it had completed its mission and would be closing its doors and reopening with a new focus.

Unitus seems to be a case in which a charity decided that more money wouldn’t help further its mission or do more good. However, Unitus’s donors seemed surprised by the charity’s decision, and Mr. Karnofsky says that donors shouldn’t “rely on a charity to tell them when it is running out of room for funding.”

They should be asking this question of the charity when they are evaluating whether to give, he says.

Do you agree with Mr. Karnofsky that even the most successful of programs may not have “room” for more dollars? Do aid groups in Haiti have “room” for more support?