Before donating to charity, many donors want to know what portion of their donation the nonprofit will spend on programs versus overhead. And this makes sense. Charities and nonprofit fundraisers often reference two industry-endorsed public letters, collectively entitled The Overhead Myth, when advocating against the degree to which donors should focus on how efficiently their contributions will be spent. The nonprofit sector’s constant promotion of the idea that overhead ratios should practically be ignored threatens to diminish one of the most effective tools the average donor has to avoid charity scams and predatory fundraisers.