My experience from briefly working within the charitable sector is thus. A lot of charities are constantly playing catch-up.
What I mean by that is that they are often given money for very specific projects, however a charity has real people working for it, and those people have to eat and pay rent just like the rest of us.
So what happens is when the charity is suffering a shortfall in donations, they will use some of that project money to pay staff, then they are trying to cover the projects that didn't get funded properly with money from other 'project donations'.
What I found was that the biggest donations they need are the ones that just come in ad-hoc, that way they always have a fund large enough to pay employees.
This is the life of most small to medium charities, I think as they grow and administration and logistics get more complex, then so too does the chance for corruption and general mismanagement.
As far as looking to start your own initiative, you should look into Utopian.io, because the way they've set things up donations are never touched by the owner of the project, rather they are distributed via bots and the like.
Good subject, and I think blockchain technologies will have a large say in the future of all charities.
RE: The misuse of charitable donations