I've seen that some charities send out stuff like a notebook for a kid you sponsor - write your name and send it back so we can send it to Africa! What a waste. I won't contribute to a charity that wastes donation money like that.
https://www.givedirectly.org/
That irks me too. Plus then you have to figure out what to do with the unwanted "gifts". Thanks for the givedirect link.
I'm not saying that I necessarily think that sending items like that through the mail is the best use of money, but I do understand what they're trying to do. Many people "need" (want!) to feel a sense of connection with where their money goes, and those techniques, though Mustachians may disapprove, do get more donor dollars. It's a form of engagement between donor and recipient.
That's what a charity is supposed to do - convince people that their cause is the one worth supporting, so that they get more donors to do more of their charitable work. If those techniques didn't result in more donor dollars, the charities wouldn't do them. It's a trade-off, for them, between convincing people to support their work so they have more money with which to do that work, and putting the money to work most efficiently.
Often those techniques are used by charities where there is already a direct one-to-one link between a donor and a specific recipient (like Foster Parents Plan, World Vision, etc). Depending on the organization, the recipient may be largely symbolic - some of those agencies do use the money for individual children, but for most, the money actually goes to support work across an entire community, like wells, schools, medical clinics, etc. But there, building the relationship between donor and recipient is key to the ongoing support of the larger project, and as well, serves a psychological purpose for people in a developing nation - that there are people halfway across the world who care about me, want to see me succeed and get an education etc. Considering the money they invest in community projects in the sponsored children's communities, the cost of those gifts and even mailing them is really minimal. Looking at the overall ratio of direct work to admin costs, IMO, is a more helpful indicator of whether the charity is doing good work.
One final thought. In the latter case (sponsored or "foster" children). There's a natural inclination, when you are building a relationship with a child - even one halfway around the world - to want to send gifts. But there are major limitations on doing so, so as not to set up an inequality situation within the child's family and community. You can basically send stickers and other small paper things like that. When the organization then makes bulk purchases of notebooks, flat packed "birthday crowns" and other gifts that are cheap to mail, they are then being more cost effective than if each individual donor was to purchase similar gifts, while still letting the donors mark normal gift giving times of the year, such as birthdays, and Christmas.
This is just a slightly different perspective on the way those charities operate. Everyone of course will have their own criteria for choosing what charities they're going to support. I'm just saying I think that gifts automatically = waste is a fairly un-nuanced perspective. Though you are free to disagree! Isn't that the beauty of this community? So many different perspectives :-)
A more general contribution to the thread - can't remember if anyone has linked yet to this website that rates and ranks charities by a number of criteria:
https://www.charitynavigator.org/ They also have blog articles on things like what to consider when choosing a charity, and how to get charities to stop contacting you!