This document shows the schedule of outgoing grants filed by HSUS along with its 2009 federal income tax return. Entries marked with a highlighter indicate grants to organizations whose function includes the hands-on rescue, care, and adoption of dogs and cats. (Horse and rabbit sanctuaries were also included.)

This is the 1991 HSUS Report of the President, presented by John Hoyt at the Annual Membership Meeting in Washington, DC. Hoyt claims that HSUS is separate from the animal rights movement that developed in the 1980s, writing: "the lines between animal protection groups such as The HSUS and animal rights groups such as PETA are being more clearly drawn and less frequently cross." Hoyt, however, later states that "[t]his is not to say that the rights of animals should be either ignored or minimized as a meaningful and vital philosophy. Indeed, it must not be."

Hoyt also states that he wishes HSUS to formally promote the message of eating less meat. He quotes from his April 1990 Earth Day speech, in which he said "Planet Earth is dying, and it is we, the people, who are hastening her demise."

The Report also includes passages from:

• Patricia Forkan, Senior Vice President
• Phyllis Wright, VP-Companion Animals
• Randall Lockwood, VP-Field Services
• David Wills, VP-Investigations
• Michael Fox, VP-Farm Animals and Bioethics
• John Grandy, VP-Wildlife and Habitat Protection
• Jan Hartke, VP-Environment
• Patty Finch, VP-Youth Education
• Roger Kindler-- Office of the General Counsel
• Michael Fox, Director of the Center for Respect of Life and Environment

This document is courtesy of the University of Illinois Archives/Harold D. Guither papers.

We believe reproducing this material constitutes a "fair use" as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this material for purposes of your own that go beyond "fair use," you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

This is a copy of the Form 990-T (Exempt Organization Business Income Tax Return) that HSUS filed for fiscal year 2007. According to the IRS, "Any domestic or foreign organization exempt under section 501(a) or section 529(a) must file Form 990-T if it has gross income from a regularly carried on unrelated trade or business, of $1,000 or more."

For 2007 HSUS reported $135,373 net income from advertising. After deductions, its total unrelated business taxable income was -$100.

This is a copy of the Form 990-T (Exempt Organization Business Income Tax Return) that HSUS filed for fiscal year 2008. According to the IRS, "Any domestic or foreign organization exempt under section 501(a) or section 529(a) must file Form 990-T if it has gross income from a regularly carried on unrelated trade or business, of $1,000 or more."

For 2008 HSUS reported $62,440 net income from advertising. After deductions, its total unrelated business taxable income was -$100.

This is a copy of the Form 990-T (Exempt Organization Business Income Tax Return) that HSUS filed for fiscal year 2009. According to the IRS, "Any domestic or foreign organization exempt under section 501(a) or section 529(a) must file Form 990-T if it has gross income from a regularly carried on unrelated trade or business, of $1,000 or more."

For 2009 HSUS reported $21,824 net income from advertising. After deductions, its total unrelated business taxable income was -$73,233.

This HumaneWatch special collection includes 13 files containing more than 1,500 pages of material comprising the files of former Humane Society of the United States Board member Susan Pepperdine. We obtained these documents in late 2010 from a third party. Ms. Pepperdine has confirmed their authenticity for us, and we are publishing them with her permission.

Generally, these documents concern a tumultuous period of time in HSUS's history, involving:

1. an attempt by then-HSUS President John Hoyt to merge HSUS with the Michigan Humane Society in 1987; and
2. the attempts of a minority group within HSUS's Board to promote institutional accountability, following their discovery that Hoyt and HSUS Treasurer Paul Irwin had been receiving lavish extra compensation approved by a small “Deferred Compensation Committee.”

Full descriptions of each of these 13 PDFs are below. (Historians will also want to download our complete inventory of the entire collection, conveniently cataloged in a single Microsoft Excel file.)

Tirana & Harmon Correspondence | Media Clippings | Michigan Merger | Board Correspondence | Audit Documents | Legal Correspondence | Legal Documents | Governance Documents | HSUS Directors | Combined Financial Documents | HSUS Publications | Miscellaneous Correspondence | Miscellaneous Notes

Background

Hoyt was unsuccessful in merging HSUS with the Michigan Humane Society (MHS), in no small part due to revelations about the character and history of then-MHS director David Wills. Those revelations included a past felony conviction and a faked résumé.

Upon discovering that a small Board committee had discreetly authorized extra compensation “perks” for Hoyt and Irwin, the dissenting board members formed an Audit Committee to investigate the matters. The full HSUS Board unanimously approved the creation of this Audit Committee, which then hired Washington, DC attorney Gail Harmon to write a full report and offer her opinion on whether Board members and HSUS executives had violated any laws, and whether HSUS itself had incurred legal liability.

Harmon concluded that because the “extra” compensation (which included real estate deals and payments from "dormant" HSUS accounts) had not been reported on HSUS’s federal income tax return, the HSUS Board and executives were in serious legal jeopardy. (The full Harmon & Weiss Report can be found here.)

In response, other board members hired attorney Jacob Stein to write a second “independent” report on the situation. (Stein was Board Chairman Bill Wiseman’s personal attorney, which was a conflict of interest since the Harman report implicated Wiseman personally.)

Stein’s report had similar findings of fact as Harmon’s but came to different conclusions. Stein did not believe that the HSUS board and its officers were in legal limbo.

Later, an effort commenced (and it's not clear who initiated it) to contact the California Attorney General with a request for an investigation of HSUS’s alleged fiduciary malfeasance. The California AG’s office did contact HSUS, writing that “Information obtained by this office reveals that certain principals of the organization have engaged in a course of conduct that, in our opinion, is a violation of fiduciary duties owed to the charitable beneficiaries.” It’s unclear how the investigation ended.

Documents

Each set of documents can be downloaded individually. An inventory of the complete "Pepperdine Papers" is also avaliable. Please right-click on the name and select “save file as” to save each PDF to your computer. We recommend this option since some files are quite large.

Click HERE to download a Microsoft Excel file containing a complete inventory of the documents in each PDF above.

1. Tirana & Harmon Correspondence
   
   This document contains correspondence to and from Gail Harmon and Bardyl Tirana. Harmon was the attorney in charge of the initial HSUS Audit Committee report in 1988. Tirana was HSUS board member Samuel Bowman's personal attorney, and represented him for the purpose of inspecting HSUS’s books and records.
    
2. Media Clippings
   
   This file contain a series of newspaper clippings from the late 1980s. It includes pieces from syndicated columnist Jack Anderson, who in 1988 and 1991 wrote about the internal strife at HSUS.
    
3. Michigan Merger 
   
   These documents pertain to the proposed merger in 1987 between HSUS and the Michigan Humane Society, including a transcript of a TV interview with then-MHS President David Wills; Wills’ guilty plea for breaking & entering; and a letter about Wills from the Washington Humane Society.
    
4. Board Correspondence
   
   This file contains volumes of correspondence to and from board members, board committees, and HSUS executives. Most of the correspondences deals with requests for information and concerns about, and defenses of, the actions of the Deferred Compensation Committee, which helped funnel compensation to HSUS executives in relative secrecy. (Note: This file is nearly 700 pages long. Please download it before reading or printing.)
    
5. Audit Documents 
   
   This set of documents includes HSUS’s revenue history from 1979 to 1990, HSUS financial statements and auditors’ reports from 1980 to 1985, and financial statements and reports for HSUS’s trust funds.
    
6. Legal Correspondence
   
   This PDF includes interrogatory letters from attorney Gail Harmon to John Hoyt and Paul Irwin, letters from HSUS board member John Mettler stating his concerns, and correspondence with the California Attorney General’s office.
    
7. Legal Documents
   
   This file includes "Form 990" tax returns for HSUS from the years 1980 through 1986. It also includes 990s for the National Humane Education Center for the years 1983 through 1986. NHEC was a defunct shell corporation controlled by HSUS that was used to funnel compensation to Hoyt and Irwin. This PDF also includes employment agreements for Hoyt and Irwin, and a draft of a class-action civil lawsuit (never filed, to our knowledge) against HSUS.
    
8. Governance Documents
   
   This file includes copies of HSUS’s by-laws, minutes of various HSUS Board committee meetings (including the now-infamous "Deferred Compensation Committee"), a record of the HSUS nominating committee, HSUS’s board members at various points in time, and third-party papers on good governance procedures for organizations.
    
9. HSUS Directors
   
   These are files from a folder that Susan Pepperdine labeled “HSUS—Directors.” They include a copy of HSUS's full Deferred Compensation Plan, letters from attorney Gail Harmon, and letters from the Audit Committee.
    
10. Combined Financial Documents
    
    This file includes copies of balance sheets for HSUS’s board-designated funds from 1983 to 1986, insurance policy details for Hoyt and Irwin, and a proposed 1990 HSUS budget.
     
11. HSUS Publications
    
    This set includes brochures for several HSUS annual conferences in the 1980s, a few copies of HSUS’s annual “report of the president,” and more recent printouts from HSUS’s website.
     
12. Miscellaneous Correspondence
    
    This file contains a smorgasbord of uncategorized documents including letters from John Mettler and Bardyl Tirana, a statement from the HSUS Board regarding Jack Anderson’s columns, and news articles about alleged embezzlement at the Michigan Humane Society.
     
13. Miscellaneous Notes
    
    This batch of documents includes a claim that HSUS spent half a million dollars as a result of executive misconduct, a draft letter to a state Attorney General from “board members,” and typed notes (unattributed, although we understand that they are Susan Pepperdine's) regarding complaints against Hoyt and Irwin.

This file contains a 1988 letter to DC attorney Jacob Stein from John "Speedy" Mettler, who was then a Board Member of the Humane Society of the United States’ Board of Directors. Stein is a personal injury attorney. He is now a partner in the same law firm (now renamed) for which he worked in 1988.

This letter concerned a plan by the HSUS Board leadership to hire Stein (then the personal attorney of Board Chairman Bill Wiseman) to “investigate” some shady financial dealings between a “Deferred Compensation Committee” (a subset of the Board that was never legally empowered) and HSUS’s top two executives (Paul Irwin and John Hoyt). These matters had already been investigated by attorney Gail Harmon, and the Board already had her report.

In a previous letter to the HSUS Board’s Vice Chairman, Washington attorney Bardyl Tirana had already warned HSUS about the wisdom of hiring Stein to do a second review of the facts. Tirana thought Stein’s attorney-client relationship with Wiseman constituted a massive conflict of interest, and he feared that Stein’s report was only being sought as a pretext to sweep Harmon’s report under the rug:

William Wiseman, using the power of the chair, after soundly criticizing the “Harmon” report as unbalanced and unfair, announced that he had a plan. He then proceeded to state that “Jake Stein (his personal attorney) has an idea that will get everyone off the hook by starting a procedure that will resolve all of these matters.” You were described as the “new Independent Counsel” and Mr. Wiseman repeated that this would get the Board “off the hook” and said, “we need outside independent counsel of unchallengeable prestige.”

Mettler also neatly lays out the relationship between the HSUS Board’s “Deferred Compensation Committee” (which was never legally constituted, yet met in secret and extended unauthorized perks to Hoyt and Irwin); the “Audit Committee” (which was unanimously approved by the Board and which hired Gail Harmon); and the later “Select Committee” (which was stacked with those implicated in the Harmon report and their sympathizers, and which hired Jacob Stein):

I might point out that Ms. Harmon was also an “independent counsel” but since Mr. Wiseman and others were incriminated in her report, Mr. Wiseman preferred to ignore both the Audit Committee (appointed by the Board) and the Harmon report because there were too many questions raised in the Harmon report that made him, the Deferred Compensation Committee, and some of the executive staff all look bad. So using the chair to his advantage. Chairman Wiseman appointed a “select” committee, stacked heavily with his own sympathetic directors, to try and bury the Harmon report once and for all ...

As you should be well aware, the “Select” Committee was carefully designed by Chairman Wiseman to supersede, and in effect ignore the work done and report issued by the earlier Audit Committee and its attorney, Gail Harmon. (This committee incidentally was unanimously authorized by the Board of Directors in December, 1987). Is Chairman Wiseman, who is under such criticism for having aided and abetted the Hoyt-lrwin activities, really to be part of this “select” committee? Is John Hoyt to be part of it? Or are they simply included to be sure the Harmon report is effectively obliterated?

This file contains a 1988 letter from attorney Bardyl R. Tirana to O.J. (“Joe”) Ramsey, then the Vice Chairman of the Humane Society of the United States’s Board of Directors. Tirana was a former Washington, DC School Board member, and a campaign aide to Jimmy carter who supervised the activities surrounding Carter’s 1976 Inauguration. He later served the Carter Administration as director of the Defense Civil Preparedness Agency. (President Carter later merged that agency into FEMA in 1977.)

Three HSUS Board Members retained Tirana in 1988 that year to represent HSUS’s interests, after details emerged of shady financial dealings between a “Deferred Compensation Committee” (a subset of the Board that was never legally empowered in the first place) and HSUS’s top two executives (Paul Irwin and John Hoyt).

This letter concerns, among other things, Tirana’s legal fees—which HSUS’s Board was obligated to pay. (HSUS’s by-laws permitted Board members to be reimbursed “for necessary expenses incurred in fulfilling their duties.”)

It became “necessary” for an outside lawyer to investigate HSUS’s Board after the three dissenting Board members questioned the decision of HSUS’s Board to buy then-HSUS-president John Hoyt’s house from him in 1987 and lease it back to him rent-free.

They also questioned a land deal that benefited HSUS Treasurer Paul Irwin (who would later succeed Hoyt as HSUS President). Irwin had invested in a vacation home property in Brightwater, Maine. HSUS later reimbursed him for the property with $85,000 in HSUS funds. John Hoyt signed the checks.

These and several other instances of Board mismanagement were detailed in a lengthy independent investigatory report submitted to the Board's Audit Committee in April 1988 by Washington, DC attorney Gail Harmon. Tirana’s letter makes it clear that HSUS’s top leaders sought to bury that report, and to replace it with a less critical investigation conducted by Washington attorney Jacob Stein—who was also the personal attorney of HSUS Board Chairman Bill Wiseman.

This document contains a Consolidated Financial Report for the Humane Society of the United States, dated on December 31, 1995. It includes HSUS's balance sheet and statements of cash flows, functional expenses, and revenue, expenses, and changes in fund balances.

It was prepared by the Washington, DC public accounting firm of Thomas Havey & Company.

This "Memorandum of Understanding" is a contract offered by the Humane Society of the United States to literally thousands of U.S. pet shelters in January 2011, in conjunction with HSUS’s February 2011 “SPAY DAY” promotion.

HSUS offered a similar contract to shelters in 2009. Its annual report claims “nearly 400 organizers in 24 countries” participated, but HSUS’s tax return for the same year reports the disbursement of only about 155 related grants.

In exchange for $2,000 from HSUS, the contract requires pet shelters to turn over detailed records on every animal spayed or neutered with the funds. It also requires each participating shelter to give HSUS at least two photographs and two glowing testimonials for HSUS to use in its public-relations campaigns.

In January 2011 many shelter directors reported that this contract created division among their Board members and staff. The most common disagreement arose over whether it would be appropriate for a shelter that HSUS has never financially supported to accept limited funding for a narrow purpose—with one result being HSUS’s ability to promote itself as something it’s not (a shelter-support charity).

This document contains a Consolidated Financial Report for the Humane Society of the United States, dated on December 31, 2009.

It was prepared by the public accounting firm of McGladrey & Pullen. HSUS filed it with the West Virginia Secretary of State's office, as part of the process of renewing a fundraising license for the Humane Society Wildlife Land Trust. It's now a part of the public record.

The Report discloses that the HSUS family of organizations had a combined net worth of $191.3 million as of 12/31/2009, including $148 million in investments ($66 million of which are in hedge funds). Its land and buildings are worth $17.4 million. It spent $34.2 million on salaries and employee benefits. Its pension funds are valued at $18.5 million (which is still $8.8 million less than the $27.3 million in obligations it owes its employees who will retire in the future..

HSUS's auditors report that the organization and its affiliates collectively spent $25.3 million on fundraising expenses (just 18.8% of their $134 million in total expenses). But Animal People News, the internal watchdog newspaper of the animal rights movement, has performed its own analysis that concluded HSUS spends fully 50% of every dollar on fundraising expenses.

This document, a legal-size mailer from the Humane Society of the United States, is titled "A Discussion ... Rights For Animals." It was produced and printed in 1990. A fundraising-disclosure disclaimer that only applies to West Virginia donors may suggest that this version was only sent out to HSUS's mailing list in that state.

This piece begins with a revelation that may startle 21st-Century readers who are accustomed to seeing HSUS distance itself from the divisive language of "animal rights": 

The Humane Society of the United States has long been in the forefront of advocating the recognition of rights of and for animals. At its national membership conference held in San Francisco in 1980, the membership of The HSUS formally resolved to "pursue on all fronts ... the clear articulation and establishment of the rights of all animals ... within the full range of American life and culture."

The two-page treatise, unusual for a fundraising mailer in its philosophical long-windedness, mainly argues that "animal rights" means including animals "within the same system of moral protections that govern our behavior toward each other."

In particular, the fundraising mailer emphasizes the need for animals to have legal standing in courts of law:

[Animals] are viewed as having no inherent capacity to invoke the protection of the state, and their entire legal status is underpinned by constitutional doctrines that deny them recognition as "persons."

Access to the courts is such a powerful right and would pose so revolutionary a threat to the established order that it will probably be among the last of animal rights to be recognized, requiring statutory, even constitutional, changes.

The author writes that animals should enjoy the legal right of having "third parties" sue on their behalf. "The critical goal," HSUS explains, is "getting litigation into a format where someone with ready access to the judicial system is representing the animal and its interests and only the animal and its interests."

Predictably, the leaflet ends with a request for money, promising that "Money donated is put into action on the front line right away. The animals need us now."

This document is reproduced through the courtesy of the University of Illinois Archives (Harold D. Guither Papers, 1977-2001) 

This document contains a set of all of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests made by the Humane Society of the United States to the U.S. Department of Agriculture during 2010.

In total, HSUS made 17 requests, including inquiries for records involving predator control methods (M-44 and sodium fluoroacetate) and licensed animal breeders.

(Note: This file is 6.5 megabytes. We strongly recommend that you right-click on the "DOWNLOAD" link and select "Save Link As" to save the document to your computer instead of viewing it in your internet browser.)

This map, from page 20 of the HSUS-published 2011 Shelter Pages, shows the names of all of the Humane Society of the United States "State Directors" as of press time.

State Directors are generally HSUS's chief lobbying coordinators and press spokespersons for state-level issues.

The map shows that HSUS has Directors in 40 of the 50 states. At the time of this writing, the organization was also actively seeking to hire directors for three more (Nevada, Kansas, and Alaska). HSUS has also had a Rhode Island State Director in the past.

The states that appear to be of less concern to HSUS include Utah, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Carolina, Maryland, and Connecticut.

We believe reproducing this material constitutes a "fair use" as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this material for purposes of your own that go beyond "fair use," you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

This document contains a Consolidated Financial Report for the Humane Society of the United States, dated on December 31, 1994. It includes HSUS's balance sheet and statements of cash flows, functional expenses, and revenue, expenses, and changes in fund balances.

It was prepared by the Washington, DC public accounting firm of Thomas Havey & Company.