Oct 17 2010
The Incredible Shrinking HSUS
UPDATE: As of 2:04 pm EDT on Monday, the Neosho Daily News has changed the text of its story in response to a complaint from HSUS. The copy now says HSUS claims to have 300,000 members in Missouri alone! (If you believe that, we have some lovely swampland in North Dakota to sell you...) The Daily News hasn't published a correction or otherwise acknowledged the edit, and it left no trace online of the original text (reflecting that HSUS has 300,000 members "in the United States"). That text ran in the print edition of the newspaper on Sunday. Google also has a cached copy, for those of you who want a screen-grab.
It's our view that the reporter got it right the first time, and that HSUS was caught in a rare moment of candor. Remember: HSUS's federal income tax return says it prints only 420,000 copies of its membership magazine, and that's for the whole country...
It's been 8 months since we started deconstructing the Humane Society of the United States's membership statistics. No one realistically believes HSUS has anything close to 11 million members, but coming up with a more accurate number is tough. (Probably by design.)
So how many members does HSUS really have? After our first attempt at clearing the air, we revisited the subject in July and again in September. Every time a new clue emerges, we get closer to the truth.
Some new evidence comes to us today from Missouri's Neosho Daily News, which covered the "Proposition B" political campaign over the weekend. And if an HSUS deputy campaign manager is to be believed, HSUS's actual grassroots support is smaller than we ever expected.
Dale Bartlett, the "deputy manager of public policy for the HSUS’ puppy mill / animal cruelty campaign" sat down for an interview with The Daily News. The most telling part of the resulting Sunday feature article comes near the end (emphasis added):
Bartlett said some 2,000 Missourians have contributed money to his group’s effort to get Proposition B passed into law, while the Humane Society of the United States has 300,000 members in the United States.
Just 300,000 members? That's not a typo. More than 22 hours after the story was first posted online, this text is still there. For perspective, 300,000 members translates to less than 700 in each Congressional district. Not exactly the stuff of high-octane lobbying clout.
Again, we've explored this topic quite a bit. And we've come up with plausible membership numbers ranging from 400,000 to 1.2 million. This number, from one of HSUS's own managers no less, is a low watermark.
To be fair, Bartlett did say that HSUS has 300,000 members in the United States, not globally. But at best, this bodes well for the low end of our practical working scale, meaning that HSUS has at most 400,000 members. (That's 920 per Congressional district.)
The fact that HSUS represents no more actual Americans than the "Church of the Jedi" should be in the hands of every elected lawmaker in the United States. The same goes for HSUS's own founding document, which forbids the group from lobbying in the first place. Consider this a generic set of marching orders for all you legitimate lobbyists out there. You know who you are.
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Posted on 10/17/2010 at 11:46 PM by the HumaneWatch Team
Gov't, Lobbying, Politics • Pets • (13) CommentsComments
Well we really should believe their Deputy manager. He would never lie about the number. being less than it is. Maybe over the number but never under. So they have no less than 300,000 but could have as little as 1.
If we call Humanewatchers “members” we are only 123,000 members below HSUS and that is in less than a year.
HSUS international is in the hole about 11 million dollars so may not have any members Internationally, at least no one who would admit they were.
How would you like to tangle with HSUS, PETA and ASPCA in a lawsuit merely trying to recoup funds stolen by a psychopath then donated to these organizations?
I am and it ain’t fun.
isn’t that interesting…
more proof that HSUS lies
Perhaps a link with a letter stating the facts of membership and a quote from the articles of incorporation that we can click on and have them sent to our representatives. Sierra Club does this. You simply type in your name and address, and it sends to your state representatives in Washington.
Anyone notice how infantile the headline to the Daily News interview is? “Proposition B will halt animal cruelty.” Give me a break. Prop B will not “halt” animal cruelty anymore than anti-homicide laws have halted murder. You will always have lawbreakers no matter how tough the laws are. How childish can HSUS get?
Peggy - The H$U$ will never do this, because they don’t WANT factual numbers readily available to anyone. They just want lawmakers and the general public to blindly accept their word that they have “11 million members”.
For all its flaws, (and it has too many to list in this format), the Sierra Club is a real not-for-profit which actually follows the tenets of its charter, and all the laws governing charities and not-for-profits, ergo it has nothing to hide.
The H$U$, on the other hand, is on a par with those “police charity” scams we all know and love, and has absolutely everything to hide. They will never, ever have transparency of any sort, because transparency would be their downfall.
My conspiracy thinking mind wondered if this bill was the result of the HSUS still pouting over losing the case against Hunte Inc., which by the way is located in Neosho. If they can’t beat them in court, they will try their hardest to pinch their wallets in other ways. Not being from Mo., I am still very happy to see the ag. community of the state coming together to fight this, it is what is needed. I hope the good people of Mo., will be able to see through Wayne’s slick little smirk of a smile, and his fine suit, but I think they will.
@HumaneWatch—
You are a SMASH HIT in my book!! And aren’t you “glad” you stumbled on so many of “US” poor pet people with the “big guns of HSUS” aimed at us with the other animal people standing right in back of us?
I’m curious; just when does it become a legal issue when a group such as the HSUS says it has more members than actually exist? Maybe it is time for a law to be passed to define what a “member” is. As it stands now, groups like the HSUS can lie to their hearts content and there is no way to validate their membership claims nor is there any punishment should they be lying and inflating membership numbers.
Maybe it is as simple as defining “members” as those individuals who have made financial contributions to the organization in the last 12 months? Somehow there has to be some clarity as to the actual support these groups are receiving. When groups like the HSUS get to arbitrarily determine the number of members used in part to influence a person’s perception about the public’s support for their cause, there is a inherent risk that these numbers will be inflated.
Wayne Pacelle wrote in a fundraising letter that HSUS has 1.2 million members and now we are told that 300,000 of them are in Missouri? So according to HSUS, 25% of all HSUS members reside in Missouri. Am I the only one who finds that hard to believe?
http://www.humanewatch.org/images/uploads/2010_July_fundraising_letter.pdf
I think HSUS inflates its numbers by also counting the memberships of other organizations that provide funding including those that do so through the Tides Foundation. It not the first time they lie or twist the truth and it won’t be the last. Keep digging deeper Wayne, one by one, Americans will become wiser to the corruption in the AR industry!
Sierra Club MAY be on the up and up with its non-profit status, tax filings and membership numbers, but don’t be misled to believe they don’t support the animal rights industry - they do. They spend hundreds of thousands of $/yr supporting anti-animal agriculture efforts. There is a tremendous amount of money getting funneled through Tides supporting AR industry efforts as well - legislation needs to be passed requiring transparency for all (including non-profit) donations to be tax exempt!
It’s amazing to me that the media can use HSUS as a “Credible” and “reliable” source of any information.
On another note, according to the amount of membership magazines that HSUS publishes, there are 420,000 members. If 1 in 7 are knowledgeable about HSUS, that leaves a little over 61,000 that are aware that HSUS is a lobbying organization.
Thanks for all you do Humane Watch!
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Wayne: Shrinkage can be embarrassing. Get ready. Lots of us are filling buckets with more cold water. And winter is on the way.