M,
1) You seem to infer that salaries are not an appropriate expense for an organization, why would that be? Doesn’t the Mir have to pay its Rabbeim? And the executive Director and the remainder of the office staff?
2)Program expenses means that is what is spent on program, the purposes of the organization. A program of an organization is not going to be only giving out money unless they are solely a grant making organization. And even then it is likely that there will be salaries and related expenses that are deemed programmatic.
3) I don’t know the details of the marketing included in program, however it is pretty clear that an outreach organization would have marketing as part of their program. There would also be other educational outreach that would be communicated via programmatic marketing. I know I’ve seen many informational articles on general child raring information and car safety distributed by K4K.
4) When you make general donations, you are not making them to K4K, that organization does their fundraising almost solely through vehicle and other non cash contributions. They are asking for the car you were disposing of (anyway) they are not asking for your cash. Nor are they holding a Chinese auction of any sort. That is a different organization. As noted before, the inherent cost of acquiring such donations is high, but it is tied directly to advertising.
5) To reiterate, the organization you would be donating to would not be the organization that you fear is spending so much of what it raises to obtain the funds. And the programmatic percentage of even K4K was 63% in 2014, just shy of the BBB’s general 65% for all charities, even those that would seem to really have no meaningful overhead.
6) The fundraisers that go out for many organizations get a much higher cut than 35% of what they collect. Your suggesting that this would be indicative of a “not honest” tzedakah is unfounded. They, unlike many other organizations, undergo annual audits and report their activities. V’dal.