Charities (non-profits) need to file information with the IRS in order to keep their tax exemption. Among other numbers, they need to report:
– program expenses (actually helping the animals)
– Administrative expenses
– Fund raising expenses

(see this website: http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?keyword_list=animals&Submit2=GO&bay=search.results )

What you are looking for is program expenses in the 80–90% range, which means that most of the money goes to the reason you gave it.

Alarm bells should be sounding if you see fund raising expenses being more than 20% or so.

A couple of years ago there was a major expose—the charity (I don’t remember what it was) was allocation 80% of its money to administrative expenses, which was awful.

Here is a REAL BAD one: http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=12761

@elbanditoroso That is a fantastic site. Here is a shorter version of the search site: http://www.charitynavigator.org/ The example you show above indicates they collected more than $1 Million but used it all for fundraising, administration and salaries. They had nothing left for charitable purposes. Shameful.

A lot of people don’t like PETA for a variety of reasons, but I can tell you from checking CharityNav in the past about PETA, what I like about them is that Ingrid Newkirk, the President, only makes about less than $50,000 annually.