How much donated money actually helps animals?
By Gina Spadafori
July 18, 2008
Long ago, I decided that big charities of any sort are pretty much the same: They raise a lot of money to raise a lot more money to raise a lot more money, and relatively little of any of it goes to the programs and services those tear-jerking entreaties tell you about.
Big national animal-advocacy groups are among the worst offenders, based on a study by the Los Angeles Times looking at the money raised vs. the return:
Ever wonder where your donations go when you give to charity by mail or over the phone? On average, commercial fundraisers deliver just 46 cents of each donated dollar to the charity. While some charities enjoy much better success, ineffective fundraisers can eat up the majority of money raised.
To see how your favorite charities or causes did from 1997-2006, search our database. It includes all for-profit fundraising campaigns exclusive to California, as well as any national campaigns that took place in the state.
The LAT-listed animal-related charities in terms of “High Revenue/Low Return” include:
- The Humane Society of the United States: 11.3 percent net return
- National Wildlife Federation: 16.6 percent
- Defenders of Wildlife: 18 percent
- PETA: 28.3 percent
Terrierman is all over this like, well, a terrier:
Back in November of 2007, I wrote a piece on this blog entitled Why the Humane Society Will Never Change in which I asked:
“Would people donate [to HSUS] if they knew 70 cents out of every dollar they gave to HSUS was spent to send out more direct mail? NO. …. Would folks continue to donate to HSUS if they knew the organization did almost nothing to help fund local animal shelters? NO.”In another post, I detailed the mechanics of the HSUS’ direct mail machine in which I concluded that:
“I think, if you follow my narrative, you will see I am really quite conservative when I say 70 to 75 cents out of every dollar most folks give to HSUS will simply go to paying for more direct mail. The real figure, for the average donor to HSUS, is well over 100 percent.”
He repeats an earlier challenge:
“If Wayne Pacelle or anyone at HSUS wants to go over specific HSUS numbers with me, I am more than happy to do so, as I work right around the corner from their office in Washington, D.C., and I would be only too happy to drop by to
pick up a copy of their accounting ledgers.In fact, if Mr. Pacelle will give me a copy of their raw direct mail expense and income data (not the processed IRS-990 data, but the real numbers showing the costs of postage, printing, paper, creative consultants, cost of caging operations, etc), I will buy him lunch and we can go over the data and run a cohort analysis to figure out how long it takes for a HSUS member to ‘go green’ and get out of the red.
My only stipulation is that after I run the data, I can publicize it. After all, who
knew truth to suffer in a free and open investigation?If am wrong about the fact that 70-75% of all HSUS direct mail money is going out to pay for more direct mail, I will be more than happy to report my error. After all, as Charles Barkley so famously said, ‘I could be wrong . . . but I doubt it.’”
Looking at the LAT’s list is truly enough to make you swear off donating money to any group that asks for it. Actually, that’s not a bad idea: Do your own research and make your donations accordingly. Direct-mail is not about making a sound, rational judgment, but rather on appealing to your emotion. Toss it all in the recyling bin!
And if the Terrierman ever does get the head of a national animal-advocacy group to go toe to toe with him, I want a ringside seat.
We bring in pet food for our local no kill shelter. I figure it’s a safe bet that donation will get used to help the shelter animals. The staff always acts appreciative. I don’t have much money to donate and really can’t stomach the thought that 75 or 85 or whatever cents of my dollar will go towards funding junk mail.
Comment by slt — July 18, 2008 @ 9:41 am
My advice to anyone who asks (and those who don’t) is always give locally or to a group you or someone you know personally have worked with.
Of course there are worthy organizations out there. While most don’t advertise, it’s not because they couldn’t use the help. the truth is most charities cannot afford to reach out for monetary contributions and perform the services that they do. Nowadays, finding a good cause to donate to only requires a little internet research and maybe a phone call or two
Comment by JenniferJ — July 18, 2008 @ 10:01 am
Terrierman also pointed out that many times organizations split themselves several different ways so that their ‘name’ fundraising branch looks better than it is.
That being said - here’s something I find confusing - how can a charity have a negative %? Best Friends Animal Society which we are all familiar with is negative in the LAT site. On Charity Navigator they are 3 star with 78% of funds going to programs.
Can someone explain this?
Comment by 2CatMom — July 18, 2008 @ 10:16 am
The LAT database is based on California Atty. General filings. It may be a mismatch between national activities and activities in the state. From the LAT:
About the data: Data analyzed for this report included all commercial fundraising campaigns reported to the state from 1997 through 2006, excluding those involving thrift store sales or vehicle donations. The data cover both California-specific efforts and national campaigns that included solicitations within California. They do not cover fundraising by charities’ in-house solicitors. These data may contain filing errors by fundraisers, or recording errors by the state. However, spot checks of records from other states showed substantial consistency with California results. In a few cases, fundraising data for directly affiliated groups operating out of the same location were combined.
Sources: California Attorney General
Comment by Gina Spadafori — July 18, 2008 @ 10:32 am
I am SO FREAKIN’ sick and tired of hearing about how HSUS rips people off. Even when I write it.
Sick to the point of puking.
And it doesn’t end. We have a story today about a puppy mill being bought out and closed by a group in WI. A hack from HSUS is quoted as bemoaning the fact that more mills aren’t shut down this way.
PUH-LEEZ! If the maroons at H$U$ put just a bit of their MILLIONS to work, they could probably close every mill in PA, MO and WI in the next 6 months. (of course, they’d all just buy new stock and start over…but)
I’m just sayin’
Comment by Janeen — July 18, 2008 @ 8:16 pm
LOVE it when Terrierman gets a rat down a hole. Keep at it, boy, I won’t stop you.
For my part my charity choices are individual—except for my vet school’s shelter medicine program, my Florida Pirg and my local public radio station (pennies to all), I give to individual animals. It’s hard to feel like your efforts are dripping into a direct mail campaign’s bucket when your own two hands are getting dirty.
Comment by Dr Patty Khuly — July 19, 2008 @ 4:36 am
2CatMom -
The discrepancy between the assessments of Best Friends by the LA Times and Charity Navigator has to do with their different methods of rating. Charity Navigator focuses on analyzing an organization’s 990 (federal tax return), which has very little detail about outside fundraising consultants. The determination made by Charity Navigator as to how much an organization devotes to its programs has a lot to do with what the organization reports as administrative overhead (i.e., other non-program staffers such as human resources, building costs, office needs) as well as the costs of in-house fundraising (i.e., a Development Director) and outside fundraising consultants.
The LA Times’ analysis is focusing only on fundraising, and as Gina Spadafori pointed out, on fundraising performed by outside contractors.
So that hopefully explains a little bit about why the two rating systems come up with very different outputs. But, without spending a lot of time looking at the LA Times’ methodology, I can’t answer how they got a negative number for Best Friends.
Hope this helped,
Megan
(a professional fundraiser)
Comment by megusmaximus — July 22, 2008 @ 11:57 am
I just realized that there’s a very simple answer as to the negative number for Best Friends - their consultants cost more money than they raised. Of course, you’ll notice that the data is from 2005, so hopefully they’ve hired new consultants since then.
Comment by megusmaximus — July 22, 2008 @ 12:24 pm