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The administrative salaries of the people running youth groups and drag shows, the venues for youth groups and drag shows, the consulting fees for ensuring that your youth groups and drag shows are totally compliant with all applicable rules and regulations, well... that costs $6.3 million, easy.
I have seen universities pay $100,000+ to consultants to give single day seminars on grant writing. Sometimes these consultants have a history of writing successful grants, so the expertise is definitely there. And some of the grants that result can be worth millions of dollars to the university, so the expense is justified on paper. But no one--absolutely no one--is doing controlled experiments in which they determine whether these consultants actually make a difference, or whether there are cheaper alternatives with similar (or better) results. It's all part of the higher education grift; if you know the right people, and have the right friends, you can quit your underpaid research post and instead make millions telling other underpaid researchers to try harder.
I strongly suspect it is the same in every grant-driven industry everywhere. (Indeed, the whole "Effective Altruism" grift has largely consisted in insisting that EA is totally different, it's definitely going to make real change, instead of just creating new jobs and generous salaries for charismatic people who would rather attend conferences in exotic locales, than do the hard work of producing meaningful work.)
EA is meaningfully different. The average charity spends 20% on overhead, and for arts and culture charities the "sweet spot" is apparently a whopping 35%.
Look at the recommended charities on GWWC (GWWC is recommended as the best overall resource for charities on ea.org). GiveDirectly spends 95% of its money on charitable expenses. For AMF it's 99.4%. Malaria Consortium is at 12% and HKI is at 16%.
If I'm understanding your links right, you flip what the numbers mean in mid-paragraph here - the first two (in the 90s) are the amount spent on actual charitable expenses while the last two (in the teens) are the amount they spend on overhead. This makes it look like the last two are really terrible wheras I take your intended point to be that they're nearly as good as the first two.
Sorry, yes, that is what I meant.
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I'm sure there are charities, including EA charities, that are better than the "average" charity along the relevant axis, sure.
But according to your own link, the managing director of GiveDirectly pulls down almost $500,000 per year. That's a hell of a grift, and perfectly analogous to my university consultant example. I'm sure the managing director has the relevant expertise, and probably is directly responsible for a healthy chunk of charitable cash transfers that would otherwise have gone elsewhere (or nowhere). But no one--absolutely no one--is doing controlled experiments in which they determine whether that $500,000 actually makes a difference, or whether there are cheaper alternatives with similar (or better) results. Personally, I know several very competent administrators who are happy to make $100,000 managing sums similar to those laid out by GiveDirectly.
Charity in America is Big Business(TM), and even EA is no clear exception.
I admit that there was no A/B test to figure out if this guy should be paid 450k or 500k or 550k.
However, is anyone actually doing the math on how much grant consultants increase grants received? I kind of doubt it. I suspect that those guys have some marketing and the university spends money on them because they have to do something, and everyone sits through the info session because they have to.
At least with EA there is at least some external validity. The money goes in, and 95 cents on the dollar goes out. Autists are working around the clock to see if you really are as effective as you claim. Ironically, this means EA charities operate more like a business than your average grants consultant, because they've got people keeping an eye on their bottom line and the business doesn't exist just to enrich the guy who runs it (unlike the grant consultant). They have to actually deliver shareholder value, where the shareholders are the recipients and the donors.
So I guess what I'm trying to say is, yes, charity is big business, and that's a good thing.
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Add in promotion and 'awareness campaigns' and security expenses.
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