[ramraj07]

In principle a competent CEO who truly brings in "novel" money to a charity more than a cheap one is worth it. Note my use of the word Novel above because it is to differentiate between money a charity makes by just poaching money that would have gone to some charity anyways from money that would not be spent philanthropically otherwise.

If Robin Mahfood can justify his 400k CEO paycheck for "Food for Poor" (real name and number) and also promise that all the new money he brought in was actually money that would have been squandered otherwise, then Robin Mahfood is indeed a worthwhile expenditure. I doubt that's the case most of the time, though.

Nevertheless, these might not be comparable scenarios anyways - an expensive CEO might atleast make financial sense if not a moral one. It's just a stretch to say a very low margin charity event is even a financially viable event, and hopefully your million dollar CeO can see that and avoid it for his charity.

[kortilla]

> charity makes by just poaching money that would have gone to some charity anyways

No, “money going to charities” is not all one bucket. A huge chunk of charities are incompetent or are just stupid ideas to begin with. It’s better for 70% of my donation to go to a competent charity than 90% to a pointless one, even if that 20% difference is going to the CEO.

Checkout givewell.org to learn about the importance of picking good charities. It is critical to poach charity money from bad charities.