It seems reasonable that if a person wants to donate to charity, that person might also want to expend some mental energy to optimize the way in which she does so.
For example, if I know that I can afford to give only $5 to charity, it does not seem particularly like a "dick measuring contest" to hope that, with a little thought, I might be able to make that $5 go further. Imagine that I can either give the $5 to a charity with an 80% overhead, or I can give the $5 to a charity with a 20% overhead. All else equal (i.e., assuming the two charities do approximately the same good with their non-overhead dollars, by whatever metric I wish to apply, including some abstract sense of personal fulfillment), my $5 seems self-evidently better spent on the 20%-overhead than on the 80%-overhead charity.
Consider the zoo for which you're a donor; if you could spend a few minutes on some activity that would double the amount of money you could give to the zoo each year without otherwise costing you any money, would you not do it? In other words: do you actually care about the outcomes of your charitable work, or are you just doing it because there is some minimum level of action at which you feel good, irrespective of the outcome?
For example, if I know that I can afford to give only $5 to charity, it does not seem particularly like a "dick measuring contest" to hope that, with a little thought, I might be able to make that $5 go further. Imagine that I can either give the $5 to a charity with an 80% overhead, or I can give the $5 to a charity with a 20% overhead. All else equal (i.e., assuming the two charities do approximately the same good with their non-overhead dollars, by whatever metric I wish to apply, including some abstract sense of personal fulfillment), my $5 seems self-evidently better spent on the 20%-overhead than on the 80%-overhead charity.
Consider the zoo for which you're a donor; if you could spend a few minutes on some activity that would double the amount of money you could give to the zoo each year without otherwise costing you any money, would you not do it? In other words: do you actually care about the outcomes of your charitable work, or are you just doing it because there is some minimum level of action at which you feel good, irrespective of the outcome?