[syntheticzero]

Hi. I work at DonorsChoose.org (as a programmer). Since I'm not an accountant I'm not entirely sure what point you're trying to make here, unless it is to suggest that in some way DonorsChoose.org is misrepresenting its finances to the world --- which we absolutely do not do. All the financial reports I've ever seen are quite clear about where the money from donors goes, how much of it goes towards operating expenses and how much goes directly to the recipients of aid. In what way does making the operational expense donation optional affect anything having to do with reporting of these numbers?

The reason DonorsChoose makes operational expense donations optional is simply to give donors a choice. They can choose to donate all their money directly to the teachers and students, or they can choose to donate part of the money to fund overhead. If they choose the former, all of the money goes to purchase materials, and all DonorsChoose overhead is drawn down from our general fund (which is currently funded from private donations and corporate donors, etc.) If they choose the latter, a portion of their donation goes towards overhead. In fact, we only currently cover about 40% of our operating expenses from the optional donation; we rely on external donations to cover the rest, but our goal is to reach breakeven (and we are on course to do so, as I understand it).

There's no sense in which the "official" "% of donations used for operating expenses" figure is fudged at all. The optional donation is precisely as described, and it's simply to give the donor choice, pure and simple.