Fundraising costs tell donors something useful about how an organization finances its work. They do not, on their own, establish whether a campaign was misleading or a charity used money improperly.
We compared reported fundraising expenses across 100 qualifying records. The results show why the charity with the highest percentage is not the one spending the most dollars.
We excluded estimated core expense fields and records whose programme, administration and fundraising categories did not reconcile with total expenses. Each ratio is fundraising expenses divided by total expenses.
That is different from a fundraiser's fee compared with the amount raised for a specific campaign. This ranking uses the organization's reported fundraising expense category.
What the wider scores add to a fundraising-cost list
| Charity | Transparency score (%) | Program score (%) | Overhead score (%) | Completion score (%) | Halal score /10 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mercy Without Limits | 80% | 78% | 22% | 84% | 7.6 |
| Penny Appeal USA | 72% | 78% | 22% | 76% | 7.3 |
| IMANA | 78% | 78% | 22% | 82% | 7.5 |
| Islamic Scholarship Fund | 78% | 78% | 22% | 84% | 7.2 |
| Islamic Ummah Relief | 85% | 79% | 21% | 82% | 7.3 |
Program, overhead, transparency and completion values are stored 0 to 100 assessment scores shown as percentages. They are not audited financial ratios, guarantees about how donations are spent or observed project-completion rates. All five records have Pass for funding, connection and legal checks within the recorded scope.
The first four have the same 78% programme and 22% overhead scores, although their fundraising ratios are around 8.8% to 9.0%. Overhead and fundraising are not interchangeable measures. Islamic Ummah Relief has the highest fundraising share but also the highest transparency score here, 85%. Its 7.3/10 halal score ties Penny Appeal USA, which is another reason not to treat fundraising-cost position as a Shariah verdict.
5. Mercy Without Limits: 8.80%, FY2023
The FY2023 figures are $2,838,031 in fundraising expenses against $32,250,351 in total expenses.
Its listed projects include Yemen Relief and Education for Refugees.
That is about $8.80 in fundraising expenses for every $100 of total spending. At roughly $2.84 million, it is the largest fundraising bill in dollars among these five, even though it is fifth by the ratio. This is why a percentage and an amount answer different questions: one describes the spending mix, while the other describes scale.
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4. Penny Appeal USA: 8.80%, FY2023
The FY2023 figures are $838,517 in fundraising expenses against $9,528,598 in total expenses.
The profile also contains separately dated named professional-fundraiser disclosures. Those entries should not be added to this total without confirming the period and accounting treatment.
The 8.80% share is almost identical to Mercy Without Limits after rounding, but the dollar amount is much smaller. Its separately dated FY2024 named-payment total of $42,150 should not be added to the FY2023 fundraising expense: the periods differ, and named payments may already be included within a broader cost category in their own year. Adding unlike figures would exaggerate the cost rather than clarify it.
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3. Islamic Medical Association of North America: 9.00%, FY2023
The FY2023 figures are $242,429 in fundraising expenses against $2,693,656 in total expenses.
Its listed work includes medical missions and professional development.
Its fundraising share is approximately $9 per $100 of total expenses. This places it close to Penny Appeal USA and Mercy Without Limits in percentage terms, not in a different cost category altogether. Medical missions explain the organization's purpose, but the record does not establish which fundraising activities generated the fee or whether they were unusually effective.
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2. Islamic Scholarship Fund: 9.00%, FY2023
The FY2023 figures are $99,793 in fundraising expenses against $1,108,803 in total expenses.
Its listed programmes include student scholarships and mentorship.
The displayed 9.00% matches IMANA after rounding. The ordering uses unrounded values; the tiny difference should not be treated as a meaningful performance gap. Its $99,793 is a much smaller bill in absolute terms, while the share of spending is nearly the same. For a donor interested in scholarships, the relevant question is the resources the fundraising supports, not the implication that second place means materially worse value than third.
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1. Islamic Ummah Relief Corp: 17.10%, FY2024
The FY2024 figures are $32,977 in fundraising expenses against $192,828 in total expenses.
Its 17.10% share is roughly $17.10 per $100 of total expenses, compared with about $9 for the next two entries. That is a meaningful difference in spending mix. Yet its $32,977 is the smallest fundraising amount on this list. A smaller spending base explains how an organization can lead a percentage ranking while spending far less on fundraising than the others.
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The percentage and the bill tell different stories
The result has two different leaders: Islamic Ummah Relief has the highest fundraising share, while Mercy Without Limits has the largest fundraising amount. Four of the five ratios cluster between 8.80% and 9.00%; treating their positions as dramatic differences would be misleading. The larger separation is between that cluster and 17.10%.
Ask what the spending supported, whether it was a one-off campaign and which funds paid for it. A fundraising ratio alone cannot tell you whether a fee came from Zakat, unrestricted income or another source.
The same rounding caution applies to the two 8.80% entries. Their countdown positions are not evidence of a substantial difference.
Zakat+ Pro puts amounts, percentages and reporting periods together. That helps a donor distinguish the size of a fundraising operation from its share of spending, instead of making a judgement from whichever single number sounds most striking.
