But Khan Academy is already providing immense value to students — actually now they're (arguably) providing 150% more value than normally. Hence, you're not be

But Khan Academy is already providing immense value to students — actually now they're (arguably) providing 150% more value than normally. Hence, you're not being asked to "transact on hope and trust". The main difference between donating to KA and a typical business transaction, is that the value of the goods/services provided does not necessarily go to the person providing the payment. There is an understandable worry about over-payment of executives, but I don't think that the "threat model" is significantly different between for-profits and non-profits. You could argue that in the case of for-profits, competition will weed out companies that over-pay their executives, but internal, corporate politics is likely to trump the market mechanism — at least that's what seems to be happening. As a result, I don't think that it makes sense to excessively harp on executive pay at non-profits you donate to, or at least not more so than you care about the pay of the CEO at a company whose products you buy.