"If a nonprofit doesn't understand better than its donors where money needs to be spent, then it's incompetent and you shouldn't be donating to it at all."

Years ago, I had a startup that was building software for non-profits. We spent a lot of time around them, talking to them, etc.

This problem of incompetence that PG briefly touches on is rampant to a degree that most would never realize. Most large NPs are more inefficient than you could possibly imagine with their money (if you don't believe me, go look at how much of their money goes to administration and how much the people at the top are paying themselves). The SMB NPs (the group my startup served) were typically run either by narcissists who's real goal was to look good to other people, or they were very non-business/money savvy and driven by passion (in a negative way). Both of these lead to poor decision making, one way or the other.

The narcissists tended to do everything they could to look good while doing almost nothing (think: hosting galas to raise "awareness" or finding ways to be involved with big important people, without actually furthering their mission). They looked great in the public eye most of the time and could flaunt their "goodness" while secretly treating their employees like trash behind closed doors.

Example: the director/founder of one NP I know of that had a mission of helping pregnant women in crisis forced her 8 months pregnant employee to walk for miles through DC and do manual labor for her. She chewed her out in front of the whole team for saying she wasn't physically capable and made her cry, demanding that she do something that was technically her (the director's) responsibility.

The non-business/money savvy person who is driven by passion at least has good intentions, but they let that passion run wild without tempering it. This leads to knee-jerk reactions and doing things just to do them, without taking the time to play the long game or even determine if the action they're taking is helping or hurting. It's the classic "give a man a fish vs. teach a man to fish" problem, where they don't slow down to look closer, and so find themselves perpetually addressing the crisis instead of the underlying issue, or creating sustainable solutions.

The NPs that manage to avoid these are so exceedingly rare in my experience that it has turned me into a cynic. I just assume that there's incompetence at play, and even outright abuse.

Anyway, I agree with PG, I just had to expand on that point because it almost felt like a footnote when IMO it is a huge part of the problem: finding good NPs to donate to unrestricted. Otherwise, you have to settle for incompetence and restrict that incompetence.