Canadian registered charities gave $762 million to third-party fundraisers between 2004 and 2008, all of it deducted from donations and often dwarfing guidelines set out by the Canada Revenue Agency, a CBC investigation has discovered.
 
In 2008, more than 200 charities paid at least half of the money they received from donors to pay third-party fundraisers, according to documents obtained from the CRA, which regulates Canadian charities.
 
The CRA recommends that no charity spend more than 35 per cent of revenue on fundraising and can revoke the registered status of any organization whose expenses appear to be disproportionately high.
 
But the CBC found examples in nearly every province in which local, provincial and national charities for years spent upward of 70 or 80 per cent of their revenues to recompense the companies that organized their fundraising drives.

Have you ever stopped giving to a charity because you became aware of the charity paying more than 50 per cent of its revenues to external fundraisers?

(This poll is not scientific. It is based on readers' responses.)