> You clearly missed the point of the "Three Cups" story. It only came to light because some insiders weren't on board.
I don't agree that that is "the" point of the story, but I didn't miss that fact. So what? Regular independent audits which are published (or at least available to funders) are a means of monitoring to detect and avoid abuse -- whether in administrative expenses or elsewhere -- and also, themselves, an administrative expense. Transparency is the antidote for abuse, but transparency requires spending money tracking things and making it available (and having someone periodically reviewing the practices of those doing the day to day tracking.)
Minimizing administrative expenses is not a means of avoiding abuse.
> In many cases of charity abuse, administrative costs is the exploitable and exploited defect
And in many cases, non-administrative costs nominally serving the charities direct mission that just happen to be used to purchase goods from firms owned by decision-makers in the charity are the exploited defect.
Share of costs that go to administrative purposes is orthogonal to abuse. Whether funds are (administrative or otherwise) are spent in a way that actually serves to advance the goals of the charity rather than the other personal interests of the charity's decision makers is the key issue, and it is neither the case that abuse is specific to administrative costs, or that increasing the share of resources devoted to administrative functions cannot improve the ability of the organization, on the same total expenditures, to advance its goals.
Share of expenditures on administrative costs is a simple metric, but it's not really a good one for either measuring the effectiveness of a charity or the risk of abuse (which aren't the same thing, although abuse is linked to lack of effectiveness.)
> Another is the cost of fundraising, which in some cases undermines the entire charity by paying too much in fundraising costs for each donated dollar.
Fundraising is actually the most common problem; its very rare for a charity with serious abuse in the way it uses other funds (administrative or non-administrative) to not also be spending virtually all of its money on fundraising, often spending it on fundraising firms that have an incestuous relationship with the charities own decision-making (to the extent that probably the single most common charity scam is charities that are essentially set up by fundraising companies with which they immediately forge exclusive contracts and serve basically as a means for funnelling donations into fundraising appeals to raise more donations to feed into more fundraising appeals.)