How to Spot a Bad Charity
A year-long collaborative effort between CNN, the Tampa Bay Times, and the Center for Investigative Reporting is exposing fraud and abuse in the charity world. There’s a tome of information on bad actors, spanning children’s issues to cancer charities to police and firefighter groups.
The investigators have boiled things down to a list of the 50 worst charities in America, based on 1) how much money a charity raised through solicitors in the past decades; 2) how much went to the for-profit solicitors and how little went to charity; and 3) how little money was paid in direct cash aid by the charity.
In short, a number of “charities” seem to be operating as essentially fundraising mills—or “factory fundraising” operations, as we like to describe the Humane Society of the United States around here.
Speaking of HSUS, the group didn’t make the list. Frankly, we’re surprised it didn’t make the cut since it gets a “D” grade from the American Institute of Philanthropy. So we decided to see how it stacked up.
Using the investigators’ criteria, we looked at how much money HSUS raised through solicitors and how much HSUS kept. We used the Pennies for Charity reports published by the New York Attorney General’s office back to 2000 to compile our data. Here’s what we found:
| Year | Professional Fundraising Firm | Receipts | $ to HSUS | % to HSUS |
|
2000 |
Share Group, Inc |
$30,584 |
($65,625) |
-214.57 |
|
2000 |
Share Group, Inc |
$1,342,494 |
$322,642 |
24.03 |
|
2001 |
Share Group, Inc |
$1,083,871 |
$16,543 |
1.53 |
|
2002 |
Share Group, Inc |
$1,299,087 |
$291,826 |
22.46 |
|
2004 |
Share Group, Inc |
$1,031,103 |
($173,726) |
-16.85 |
|
2005 |
Share Group, Inc |
$1,466,145 |
($175,360) |
-11.96 |
|
2006 |
Share Group, Inc |
$2,730,720 |
$545,843 |
19.99 |
|
2007 |
Share Group, Inc |
$1,562,814 |
$113,686 |
7.27 |
|
2008 |
Share Group, Inc |
$1,679,763 |
($19,486) |
-0.32 |
|
2009 |
Share Group, Inc |
$1,950,521 |
$103,141 |
5.29 |
|
2010 |
Share Group, Inc |
$2,400,380 |
$872,785 |
36.36 |
|
2010 |
RMG USA Inc |
$145,223 |
($50,665) |
-34.89 |
|
2010 |
RMG USA Inc |
$128,328 |
$15,905 |
12.39 |
|
2011 |
Donor Services Group LLC |
$161,459 |
$30,408 |
18.83 |
|
2011 |
USA 800 Inc |
$48,714 |
$17,283 |
35.48 |
|
2012 |
Donor Services Group LLC |
$1,084,515 |
$175,765.45 |
16.21 |
|
2012 |
Public Interest Communications |
$40,025 |
($13,716) |
-34.27 |
|
2012 |
USA 800 Inc |
$55,812 |
$36,314 |
65.07 |
| Aggregate |
$18,241,558 |
$2,043,563 |
11.20 |
In short, the solicitors raised $18.2 million and kept 89 percent of that—16.2 million. Meanwhile, HSUS only spends about 1 percent of the money it brings in on grants to pet shelters. Compared to other groups on the list of the 50 worst charities in America, HSUS is a certainly a good companion.
CIR has an online database of professional fundraisers that have been disciplined by states. Three of the six most disciplined fundraisers have been used by the Humane Society of the United States. We have written about them in the past; see our posts on InfoCision, Share Group, and Donor Services Group.
This massive investigation brings much-needed attention to abuse in the charity world. That’s good news for donors—and bad news for HSUS and those it does business with.
