The Overhead Myth is Starving Impact

For nine years, I ran a mid-sized charity providing clean, safe water in East Africa. We had two staff in Canada and about 30 in Uganda—local Ugandans building large-scale infrastructure. Every week, someone would ask about our overhead. Not about our impact. About our ratios. This question came from all sides.

Despite Dan Pallotta’s record-setting TED Talk almost twenty years ago, the stigma around charity overhead hasn’t budged. Charities still face the impossible choice: spend money raising money and risk being labeled inefficient, or stay small and underfunded compared to the impact they want or need to create. It’s the classic generosity treadmill: you run harder to prove you’re lean, but never get closer to real sustainability.

Here’s the truth: in Canada, 80% of charities earn under $500,000 annually. Most run entirely on volunteers. They’re hyper-local, rarely audited, and often without a formal fundraising strategy. Their impact? It varies. Truly.

In my experience, public conversations about overhead have done little to move the needle.  Staying small isn’t a virtue. Getting big isn’t a virtue.The real question should always be: what is the appropriate size for our strategy and desired impact?

Virtue signalling on either end of the spectrum is keeping us caught in the middle. Staff, Boards, Volunteers and Donors all need to shift the narrative.

It's time to ask better questions:

• Is the system producing the results we want?
• Is the charity budget right-sized for its impact?
• Is there a better way—and could I be a part of leading that change?

There’s no virtue in being small. There’s no virtue in being big. However, until we can have honest conversations about these matters, we can’t push for a better way.

– Jeff
Co-Founder of WellFunded

Jeff is the co-founder and CEO of WellFunded, a platform transforming philanthropy by simplifying how donors and charities discover, evaluate, and connect. He’s previously led charities, helped build a national online Donor-Advised Fund platform, and advised foundations across Canada. Offscreen, he splits his time between meaningful work, big ideas, and chasing his two kids around the pacific northwest.