I finally got sick of all the hyped up crises, sick of all the extremist rhetoric, sick of all the requests for money, and sick of all the junk in my mailbox. I quit donating to almost all of these organizations — even though I still believe in the causes. At the time, I didn’t realize how much of the money I was donating was going toward sustaining the fundraising beast.

Nowadays, I look at things differently. If an organization is based on the flaming rhetoric of emotional crisis to solicit donations, I (usually) don’t donate. This is especially true if they are using emotionally-charged horrific photographs to try to get folks to empty their wallets [oftentimes these photographs are misleading and sometimes even staged…yes, faked]

If an organization takes (nearly) sole credit for the accomplishments of collective efforts, I don’t donate. [As an example, no fewer than three organizations have tried to take a grossly disproportionate amount of the credit for getting AB 1634 shelved]

If an organization sends me multiple glossy “special appeals” mailings each year to try to get more money, I don’t donate…. because I know regardless of what Charity Navigator says that they are spending too much money on fundraising.

I donate to organizations that logically lay out facts rather than resort to simplistic emotional appeals. I donate to organizations that work cooperatively and creatively with diverse stakeholders.

I was sitting right across from her at the time. Pretty good day, that one. Her “The Monkey Wars” series, about primate research, later became a book and it’s a great read.

Quoting from Part 3 of the series, you will see the same tactics that HSUS employs:

“Dear Friend,

I need your help to stop an impending slaughter.

Otherwise, Yellowstone National Park - an American wildlife treasure - could soon become a bloody killing field. And the victims will be hundreds of wolves and defenseless wolf pups!

* * *

So begins a fund-raising letter from one of America’s fastest-growing environmental groups - Defenders of Wildlife.

Using the popular North American gray wolf as the hub of an ambitious campaign, Defenders has assembled a financial track record that would impress Wall Street.

In 1999, donations jumped 28 percent to a record $17.5 million. The group’s net assets, a measure of financial stability, grew to $14.5 million, another record. And according to its 1999 annual report, Defenders spent donors’ money wisely, keeping fund-raising and management costs to a lean 19 percent of expenses.

But there is another side to Defenders’ dramatic growth.

Pick up copies of its federal tax returns and you’ll find that its five highest-paid business partners are not firms that specialize in wildlife conservation. They are national direct mail and telemarketing companies - the same ones that raise money through the mail and over the telephone for nonprofit groups, from Mothers Against Drunk Driving to the U.S. Olympic Committee.

You’ll also find that in calculating its fund-raising expenses, Defenders borrows a trick from the business world. It dances with digits, finds opportunity in obfuscation. Using an accounting loophole, it classifies millions of dollars spent on direct mail and telemarketing not as fund raising but as public education and environmental activism.

Take away that loophole and Defenders’ 19 percent fund-raising and management tab leaps above 50 percent, meaning more than half of every dollar donated to save wolf pups helped nourish the organization instead. That was high enough to earn Defenders a “D” rating from the American Institute of Philanthropy, an independent, nonprofit watchdog that scrutinizes nearly 400 charitable groups.

Pick up copies of IRS returns for major environmental organizations and you’ll see that what is happening at Defenders of Wildlife is not unusual. Eighteen of America’s 20 most prosperous environmental organizations, and many smaller ones as well, raise money the same way: by soliciting donations from millions of Americans.

But in turning to mass-market fund-raising techniques for financial sustenance, environmental groups have crossed a kind of conservation divide.

No allies of industry, they have become industries themselves, dependent on a style of salesmanship that fills mailboxes across America with a never-ending stream of environmentally unfriendly junk mail, reduces the complex world of nature to simplistic slogans, emotional appeals and counterfeit crises, and employs arcane accounting rules to camouflage fund raising as conservation.

Just as industries run afoul of regulations, so are environmental groups stumbling over standards. Their problem is not government standards, because fund raising by nonprofits is largely protected by the free speech clause of the First Amendment. Their challenge is meeting the generally accepted voluntary standards of independent charity watchdogs.

And there, many fall short.

Six national environmental groups spend so much on fund raising and overhead they don’t have enough left to meet the minimum benchmark for environmental spending - 60 percent of annual expenses - recommended by charity watchdog organizations. Eleven of the nation’s 20 largest include fund-raising bills in their tally of money spent protecting the environment, but don’t make that clear to members.

..

“Environmental groups all do this,” he said. “They take credit for things that are generated by many, many people. What is a community accomplishment becomes an individual accomplishment - for the purposes of raising money.”

..

“Oftentimes, we said very cynically that for every dollar you put into fund raising, you only got back a dollar,” he recalled. “Unless you hit a big donor, the bureaucracy was spending as much to generate money as it was getting back.”

Some groups are far more efficient than others. The Nature Conservancy, for example, spends just 10 percent of donor contributions on fund raising, while the Sierra Club spends 42 percent, according to the American Institute of Philanthropy.

..

Determining how much environmental groups spend on fund raising is only slightly less complex than counting votes in Florida. The difficulty is a bookkeeping quagmire called “joint cost accounting.”

At its simplest, joint cost accounting allows nonprofit groups to splinter fund-raising expenditures into categories that sound more pleasant to a donor’s ear - public education and environmental action - shaving millions off what they report as fund raising.

Some groups use joint cost accounting. Others don’t. Some groups put it to work liberally, others cautiously. Those who do apply it don’t explain it. What one group labels education, another calls fund raising.

..

Look closely and you’ll find sweepstakes solicitations, personal return address labels, free tote bag offers and other fund-raising novelties cross-dressing as conservation. You also find that those who monitor such activity are uneasy with it.

David Ormsteadt, an assistant attorney general in Connecticut, states in Advancing Philanthropy, a journal of the National Society of Fundraising Executives: “Instead of reporting fees and expenses as fund-raising costs, which could … discourage donations, charities may report these costs as having provided a public benefit. The more mailings made - and the more expense incurred - the more the ‘benefit’ to society.”

The Wilderness Society, for example, determined in 1999 that 87 percent of the $1.5 million it spent mailing 6.2 million membership solicitation letters wasn’t fund raising but “public education.” That shaved $1.3 million off its fund-raising tab.

One of America’s oldest and most venerable environmental groups, the Wilderness Society didn’t just grab its 87 percent figure out of the air. It literally counted the number of lines in its letter and determined that 87 of every 100 were educational.”

Almost EVERY nonprofit conducts some or all of its fundraising this way… even the tiny grassroots organizations I was involved with. Now my group actually had “members” who participated in activities and voted for the board (which to me is a definition of member. Most of the big groups like HSUS don’t really have “members”.. they have “supporters”)

So Patrick’s posts while informative, they are no particular attacks on HSUS, but on the nature of fundraising. Which may indeed deserve such scrutiny.

But the important question to ask is not how an organization raises money, but what it DOES with the money (aside from more fundraising)

Does HSUS fail on this account?

YES! They do very very little that truly helps animals.

So the focus on fundraising is, to me, off target.

BTW given the nature of HSUS, you can expect to see a post on their “blog” attacking Terrierman personally, as well as what he does with his dogs. Wayne P did not get to where he is today by being nice.