I'm sure that some (few) of these NGOs do good work. However, sooner or later, they all seem to succumb to two problems: (1) excessive staff costs, and (2) a failure of incentives.
The second one is more insidious: If they solved the problem they address, they would no longer need to exist. They have no incentive to succeed. So they go around addressing individual problems, taking sad pictures, and avoid addressing systemic problems.
And if the systemic problems are insoluble? Then there is again an argument that the NGO should not exist. If the problem is truly insoluble, then likely the money could be better spent elsewhere.
I don't think #2 really applies for many/most orgs, since so many causes don't really have a hard and fast solution, but instead exist on a spectrum. Think of a group trying to end poverty or protect nature. Those problems will never be truly solved but they can go much better or worse.
The issue is that their incentive is on marketing more than problem solving. A good NGO can blend actual solutions into snappy marketing campaigns. Like its expensive time/effort wise to push for legislative change on an issue but its "cheap" to throw a few grand at a group of down trodden people and take some photos.
I spent some years working for a large NGO (Opportunity International) and living with people who work for NGOs.
NGOs must constantly raise money to fund their operations. The money that an NGO spends on fund-raising & administration is called "overhead". The percentage of annual revenue spent on overhead is the overhead percentage. Most NGOs publish this metric.
When a big donor stops contributing, the NGO must cut pay or lay off people and cut projects. I've never heard of an NGO "succumbing to excessive staff costs" like a startup running out of money. Financial mismanagement does occasionally happen and boards do replace CEOs. Board members are mostly donors, so they tend to donate more to help the NGO recover from mismanagement, instead of walking away.
NGOs pay less than other organizations, so they mostly attract workers who care about the NGO's mission. These are people with intrinsic motivation to make the NGO succeed in its mission. Financial incentives are a small part of their motivations. For example, my supervisor at Opportunity International refused several raises.
> So they go around addressing individual problems, taking sad pictures, and avoid addressing systemic problems.
Work on individual problems is valuable. For example, the Carter Center has prevented many millions of people from going blind from onchocerciasis and trachoma [0].
The Carter Center is not directly addressing the systemic problems of poverty and ineffective government health programs. That would take different expertise and different kinds of donors.
The world is extremely complicated and interconnected. The Carter Center's work preventing blindness directly supports worker productivity in many poor countries. Productivity helps economic growth and reduces poverty. And with more resources, government health programs run better.
Being effective in charity work requires humility and diligence to understand what can be done now, with the available resources. And then it requires tenacity to work in dangerous and backward places. It's an extremely hard job. People burn out. And we are all better off because of the work they do.
When we ignore the value of work on individual problems, because it doesn't address systemic problems, we practice binary thinking [1]. It's good to avoid binary thinking.
The second one is more insidious: If they solved the problem they address, they would no longer need to exist. They have no incentive to succeed. So they go around addressing individual problems, taking sad pictures, and avoid addressing systemic problems.
And if the systemic problems are insoluble? Then there is again an argument that the NGO should not exist. If the problem is truly insoluble, then likely the money could be better spent elsewhere.