HumaneWatch

On Tuesday we told you about how Humane Society International is claiming to be supported by 11 million people worldwide. Now, it's entirely possible that the Humane Society of the United States (which runs HSI) got its elevensies mixed up. $11 million in debt, 11 million members—you can see how easy it would be to confuse the two.

We suspected that HSI was inflating its membership numbers, but suspicion and proof are two different things. Today we have both.

The European Commission hosts a website called the "register of interest representatives." (Think of it like a Yellow Pages for European lobbyists.) And the entry called "Humane Society International" shows something very, very interesting.

One of the first articles on this blog cast doubt on the Humane Society of the United States’s frequent claim that it has 11 million “supporters.” We now know, thanks to a recent HSUS fundraising letter, that the group has (at most) just 1.2 million members. (By our math, that number could be as low as 420,000.) The “11 million” claim is pure puffery that HSUS uses to try to increase influence in its lobbying efforts.

Now that the cat is out of the bag, perhaps HSUS will stop trying to inflate its influence in Washington (and countless state capitals) by a whole order of magnitude. But never fear, the group is already starting to use its fuzzy math overseas. In a press release issued today in Great Britain, Humane Society International (HSI) claims to have “11 million supporters globally.”

Here we go again.

If you're wringing your hands today because you didn't attend the "Taking Action For Animals" conference put on by the Humane Society of the United States, take heart: You didn't miss much.

Several people who were at the Washington, DC event all weekend report that the whole thing was a big snooze-fest. We've uploaded a copy of the official program to the HumaneWatch Document Library, and one of those stalwart attendees is working on a first-person report for HumaneWatchers to read.

So stay tuned--we'll soon have our own post-game analysis to balance out the rose-colored PR emanating this morning from 2100 L Street in Washington.

HSUS staffers and their convention-goers are busily lobbying Congress today; so if you work on Capitol Hill, it might be a good day to print up a bunch of HumaneWatch ads and flyers. Just a suggestion.

We've heard from at least a dozen people in the past 72 hours about a new Humane Society of the United States direct-mail fundraising letter that's been showing up in mailboxes all across America. The three-page letter, packaged with a "2011 Pet Lover's Calendar," includes a startling statement from HSUS CEO Wayne Pacelle. Let's get right to it:

One of my goals is to build this nationwide animal protection organization from 1,200,000 to 2,000,000 members.

Just 1.2 million? That's all?

We've documented how HSUS's standard "boilerplate" way of describing its grassroots reach is to say that HSUS has "11 million supporters." (HSUS’s 2008 annual report claims 11,093,835 “members and constituents.”) But based on the published circulation numbers of HSUS's flagship member magazine, we've speculated that the group's real membership number could be as low as 420,000.

The real number—at least the one Pacelle is going with this month—appears to be closer to our estimate than to what you'll find in HSUS's press kits.

What does this all mean? Plenty, if your main job is to lobby lawmakers.

We’ve made a point of explaining that the Humane Society of the United States raises its money on the false premise that it’s primarily (or even exclusively) engaged in an animal welfare mission on behalf of dogs and cats. HSUS’s own TV ads make a compelling case for this conclusion, since they include very few animals that aren’t of the canine or feline variety.

HSUS has responded that of course it’s engaged in agitating for the rights of elephants, pigs, walruses, chickens, lab rats, cockroaches, killer whales, sharks, and the rest of the earth’s wide-ranging fauna. (OK—Maybe not the cockroaches.) HSUS Chief Operating Officer Michael Markarian even claimed this week in an Arkansas newspaper that “All our members know our mission…” as though there’s nothing surprising about an HSUS that spends less than one-half of one percent of its budget on dog and cat shelters.

But a helpful HumaneWatcher recently sent us a collection of recent HSUS fundraising mailers, and there’s one in particular that you should see. Is HSUS hiding the ball? You be the judge.

What a way for the Humane Society of the United States to start the week.

The American Institute of Philanthropy (AIP)—a highly respected charity watchdog—just released its quarterly rankings for selected charities all across America. HSUS and the Fund for Animals (which became a part of HSUS in 2005) have both been downgraded to a letter grade of “D.” (Even the kooks at PETA managed to skate by with a C-plus.)

HSUS had been holding steady at “C-minus” for the last two quarters—certainly nothing to brag about. But now AIP reports that HSUS’s fundraising costs are as high as 49 percent, meaning it can cost HSUS 49 cents to raise every dollar. That’s up from a high of 40 cents in AIP's previous rankings of HSUS.

HSUS’s spending on its actual programs (you know, what a charity is supposed to do) now also bottoms out at 49 percent. In other words, HSUS can spend less than half of its budget trying to actually help animals. How embarrassing.

First Charity Navigator downgraded HSUS in April, and now AIP has put HSUS near the bottom of its rankings. Looks like HSUS’s “factory fundraising” practices are finally catching up with it.

But cheer up, HSUS employees. You still have that sweet pension plan.

We’re still working our way through filing cabinets full of unusual and interesting research materials about the Humane Society of the United States, and eventually it will all find its way to the HumaneWatch Document Library. Today we came across a collection of papers we obtained a few years ago from Texas Tech University.

The Texas Tech library is the final resting place of 13 boxes of papers and 10 scrapbooks that belonged to the late Amy Freeman Lee (1914-2004). In addition to being a cultural philanthropist and a co-founder of the San Antonio Symphony, Lee was a Board Member of the Humane Society of the United States for a record 35 years.

In late 2006, we asked a Special Collections librarian at TTU to send us copies of anything in the Amy Freeman Lee Collection that referenced HSUS. Our request was honored, and the result of that research is 208 pages that you can view here. (It’s a large file, so we recommend that you save a copy instead of browsing it online.)

Different people will find different portions of this material fascinating, so we won’t hazard a guess about what may be the most interesting tidbit. But it’s a treasure trove of information for anyone looking to understand what HSUS used to be—which is the first step toward recognizing just what it has become.