Professional fundraising companies are a kind of moral grey area for me.
The raise money for a good cause, but keep most of it for profit. Yet, the money the good group does get is often more than they would have obtained without the help.
Suppose you run a charity. You can do a fund-raiser in house, spend $1000 on it, and earn $6000 - you get $5000 out of it, and your staff are worn out and tired from the effort.
Then a fundraising company comes along. They guarantee you $10,000 if you let them run the next fundraiser. They raise much, much more than you could have, maybe $250,000, and you get maybe $10,000 or $15,000 of that - double or triple what you could have gotten without them. You can put the money to good use, helping people who need it.
Was it worth it?