Nonprofit is my academic field and field of work and I promise those of us who give a crap about the causes work really hard to try to fix it :(

My advice is always to look at charity navigator for info on a nonprofit’s reliability, and whenever possible (just like in the private sector) give to someplace local! I’ve only ever worked for state level or smaller focused organizations and programs, and from the top down we all are not making much money and give crazy hours and effort to our missions. Once where I worked my executive director was mopping the homeless shelter because we needed an extra hand.

TLDR: Pls don’t discount the whole sector because the big guys suck, us smaller orgs give a crap and work crazy hard and usually make a LOT under what we’d make in the private sector to do something we care about