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)

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.

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’

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

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?

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