Sep 27 2010
HSUS Counts (Like Enron)
HSUS’s claim that it is “backed by” 11 million “members and constituents” continues to appear on just about everything the group sends out the door: fundraising materials, press releases, letters, you name it. We keep tripping over that word—“constituents.” What's a constituent? It's a nebulous catch-all term that could mean just about anything.
Hey—we can do that too! HumaneWatch spends all its money on “advocacy, website expenses, advertising, curing cancer, and fighting poverty.” Isn't that a neat little stunt?
As we've explained in the past, it's likely that HSUS has somewhere around 420,000 actual dues-paying members, which is less than 4% of what it reports to the media. Puffing up your grassroots numbers to an unreasonable level is an old Washington, DC parlor trick, one that has come back to bite advocacy groups before. Sometimes their sin is counting cumulatively instead of year-to-year. In other cases, it's a national group counting local affiliates' members as its own.
HSUS seems to be engaging in both dishonest strategies.
A blog comment left here on Friday afternoon shows how this sort of thing plays out.
“Anita” writes:
A month ago, I followed a link to a site where HSUS provided a form for people to contact Talbots to ask them to stop selling fur. I changed the form letter provided to say just the opposite of what HSUS wanted. […]
Ever since then, I've been getting e-mail messages from HSUS. The first contained a link to a video thanking me for "becoming one of more than 10.5 million Americans who support the mission." So that's where they get that inflated number of supporters!
So HSUS even counts its own detractors among its “members and constituents.” How convenient. Everyone who uses the HSUS website for any purpose whatsoever (as long as HSUS collects an e-mail address) becomes one of the so-called faithful.
As a side note, even HSUS's spin-doctors can't seem to keep their stories straight. HSUS’s 2009 Annual Report put the number at “11,546,803 Members and Constituents.”
Has HSUS lost 1 million “supporters” in just the past 10 months? Maybe they never existed in the first place.
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Comments
I wish I could have done what Anita did - change the form letter. I tried that a few times, but they are locked. I decided against the cut and paste method. I do send personal letters to my legislators instead.
You are probably correct that HSUS counts its detractors as so-called members. I have suspected that for years and years. I have expressed very clearly to HSUS that I strongly oppose their current mission and lobbying activities. Some 20 years ago I became suspicious of their motives and their fund raising methods, and when the junk mail kept coming in spite of my protestations, I dug around until I could find an actual phone number for them and called to put a stop to their direct mail. Guess what! The junk mail stopped, yet TEN YEARS LATER they started sending me email “Humane Alerts”. How they got my email address is a mystery. What is even spookier is the fact that the letters that they send me, like Anita’s letter, come already filled in with all my personal information and addressed to my lawmakers, both state and federal.
Last month I changed my email address, but have not informed HSUS. I just wonder if they will count me again if I send them a notice of the change . . . ?
They count every person who posts a picture of his or her own pet in the Doris Day Spay Day Contest and every person who pays $! to vote for that dog. Anyone who contacts or sends them money is entered into the database and they are counted. I am counted twice under two different name/addresses.
Dogcatcher - sounds about right. Since I have never knowingly sent the HSUS any money since the early eighties, there must be an even wider net for collecting “supporters and constituents”. I am guessing that they collect information from “front” organizations (no surprise there), and in my case, some kind of mailing list purchase. HSUS has automatically updated my email address at least once, and I just don’t have the stomach to let them know about the latest change - lest they count me again. I have a friend send me the latest ‘Humane Alerts’, just to keep up with their activities. If they eventually update my email address I will have a better idea of how they do that, now that I am aware. I also believe that I am counted twice, once as a “Mrs.” with my husband’s name.
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OK, let’s use their math - headline:
“Humane Society of the United States admits to losing over one million members and constituents since 2009.”
Even though it is doubtful they ever had a million, it is a catchy headline using their own “Humane Math” (there is a course on this, I think, at that fake Humane Society University.)