It's unfortunate that people don't get this. There was an interesting article discussing about how there's more of a sweet spot for the percentage of money that goes to charitable activities, and it's more complicated than "the closer to zero the better."

If an organization is keeping 95% for non-charitable activities then you would be right to question whether there isn't a more effective way to get a greater percentage of that money toward achieving the mission of the organization.

However, charitable organizations are not rolling in resources, whether it's money or personnel. You would be equally right to ask whether an organization that is donating 90% of money to charitable activities has the necessary personnel and workforce to actually oversee the activities they are trying to run. To take it to an extreme, I could easily be a charitable organization that donates 100% of your donations to me to the homeless on the side of the street. However, in that model I would have no ability to track how that many is used, whether it's really helping anyone, or carry out any kind of marketing activities to get more money so I could help more homeless people.

The sweet spot is somewhere between 0% and 100%. In Red Cross's case, I'm sure there's inefficiency like any other organization, but just because 80% seems high doesn't necessarily mean they're horribly corrupt. They're huge, and the donations are paying real people to do real work, hopefully for a real salary, otherwise no one would work there. When you're an international organization, you need a lot of the same infrastructure as any other international organization, and you're supposed to pay for that without selling products.