Editorial: Updated expectations of animal charities

[Guest guest]

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2008:

 

 

Editorial: Updated expectations of animal charities

 

If for just 15¢ you could ensure that

every donation you make to animal charity goes to

a charity that does what it claims to do, and

does it well, would you spend the 15¢?

The ordering price of the newly published

10th annual edition of the ANIMAL PEOPLE Watchdog

Report on Animal Charities is $25.00--about the

same as the average donation to any type of

charity these days. Divide the Watchdog Report

price by the 165 succinct reviews of prominent

animal charities that it contains, and the

average price per review is 15¢, barely a third

of the cost of mailing a donation.

The ANIMAL PEOPLE Watchdog Report on

Animal Charities helps you to target your

donations and bequests to accomplish more for

animals. The ANIMAL PEOPLE Watchdog Report

gives you an informed independent investigative

perspective on the 117 U.S. animal charities that

you are most likely to hear from by direct mail

or through e-mailings, or hear about in the

news, and on 48 foreign animal charities whose

work is of particular note. People who make large

donations, frequent donations, or are planning

their estates will find the ANIMAL PEOPLE

Watchdog Report especially helpful.

There are free online resources to which

the Watchdog Report may be compared-- but only

superficially.

The most recent available Internal

Revenue Service Form 990 public accountability

filings for all U.S. charities may be downloaded

from <www.GuideStar.org>. Similar web sites

provide the filings of British and Canadian

charities. We use these sites intensively and

highly recommend them, but average donors often

find nonprofit accountability filings quite

difficult to interpret. The Watchdog Report

abstracts the most important data for donors to

know, as a single line of type, including both

the ratio of program-to-overhead spending that

each charity claims, and the ratio as we believe

it actually would be, if no direct mail expense

is claimed as a " program " cost under the heading

of " public education. "

The web site Charity Navigator is

increasingly popular with donors to U.S.

charities of all sorts, but tends to be hugely

misleading, because the Charity Navigator

ratings are based on mere mechanical crunching of

Form 990 data, with little if any attention paid

to individually evaluating each Form 990 to make

sure the numbers are correctly reported, and

none of the assessment of major programs,

policies, administrative activity, and changes

of direction that make up most of each Watchdog

Report entry.

Donors might presume that since most Form

990 filings are made by chartered accountants,

they will be accurate. Yet the IRS itself

estimates that about 25% of all IRS Form 990

filings are incorrectly completed, sometimes

through simple error, often from seemingly

deliberate efforts to conceal or misrepresent

information. Very few such errors are flagged by

the IRS, because the IRS relatively rarely

audits nonprofit filings: that is not where the

IRS generates revenue. A correctly completed

Form 990 is hugely important to charity donors,

but since charities don't pay taxes, this tends

to be of little concern to the IRS --except when

the charity turns out to be a front for tax

evasion.

The other major charity reviewer, the

Wise Giving Alliance, does line item financial

analysis, to its credit, but it also applies

standards of governance to all charities, across

the boards, that tend to be impractical and

self-defeating for any small charity, any

charity of highly specialized purpose, and any

charity still controlled by the founders. While

the Wise Giving Alliance financial standards are

reasonable, the Wise Giving Alliance governance

standards are basically appropriate to

universities, hospitals, and other old and

large charities, but inappropriate for most of

the rest of the charitable spectrum, animal

charities most of all.

The 2008 ANIMAL PEOPLE Watchdog Report is

prefaced, like each edition since 2003, with

simple explanations of the most common methods by

which experts evaluate nonprofit financial data,

so that each reader can use the same tools to

assess any charity. A second preface includes

the 10-point ANIMAL PEOPLE codes of ethics for

animal charities and fundraisers. This year we

have amended the code of ethics for animal

charities for the first time since 2003, because

the ongoing leadership transitions at the World

Society for the Protection of Animals, detailed

on pages 16-18 of this edition, illustrated to

us that our original standard for integrity of

purpose was insufficiently clear.

The orginal standard stipulated that,

" The activities of an animal protection charity

should verifiably endeavor to help animals,

committing the overwhelming volume of resources

raised to animal protection work other than

fundraising, administration, and the

maintenance of reserve funds.

" a) ANIMAL PEOPLE believes that all

fundraising and program literature distributed by

an ethical animal protection organization should

be truthful, accurate, and up-to-date, and

should be amended or withdrawn, as is

appropriate, when circumstances change or new

information emerges. If a project, campaign,

or program is announced but fails to be

developed, for whatever reason, donors should

be told what happened and what was done instead

with the resources raised in the name of that

project, campaign, or program.

" b) ANIMAL PEOPLE believes it is

inherently unethical for board members and

executives of animal charities to simultaneously

represent organizations, businesses, political

parties, or other entities whose activities or

goals conflict with the activities and goals of

the animal charities. "

To the above we have added, " ANIMAL

PEOPLE believes that board members and executives

of animal charities should explicitly,

personally, and on the public record endorse the

goals and policies of the animal charities they

represent. In the instance that a board member

or executive opposes or seeks to amend the goals

and/or policies of the animal charity he/she

represents, the position of the board member or

executive should be clearly articulated, and on

the public record. "

Until WSPA elected a board president and

board members who have refused to personally

endorse some of the founding policies of WSPA on

the public record, we never imagined that this

could become an issue.

 

Additional points of ethics

 

Among the other major points in the

ANIMAL PEOPLE code of ethics for animal

charities, we believe that under all except the

most unusual circumstances, which should be

clearly, fully, and prominently explained to

donors with solicitations for funds, an ethical

animal protection charity should hold fundraising

and administrative cost to less than 35% of total

expense within a calendar or fiscal year. ANIMAL

PEOPLE considers " fundraising costs " to include

any use of telemarketing to solicit funds, as

well as any direct mailings which solicit funds,

include envelopes for the return of donations,

and would probably not have been mailed if postal

rules forbade the inclusion of the donation

envelopes. (This standard parallels the

guidelines of the Wise Giving Alliance.)

Twenty-three of the 117 U.S. charities

listed in the 2008 Watchdog Report flunk this

standard, including seven that are included only

because the high volume of direct mail sent on

their behalf tends to bring inquiries from

recipients far more often than their program

service would appear to warrant. The 2008 ANIMAL

PEOPLE Watchdog Report also includes what may be

the last listing for an apparently defunct

charity, once internationally prominent, which

collapsed into debt as result of a bad contract

with a direct mail fundraiser.

ANIMAL PEOPLE believes, in general

agreement with the Wise Giving Alliance and

Charity Navigator, that under all except the

most extraordinary circumstances, which should

be clearly, fully, and prominently explained to

donors, an ethical animal protection charity

should avoid keeping more than twice the annual

operating budget of the charity in economic

reserves, including investment accounts and the

reserved assets of subsidiaries.

Of the 23 U.S. charities in the 2008

ANIMAL PEOPLE Watchdog Report that appear to

flunk this standard, several came by their

wealth recently, through receipt of huge

bequests, and are now expanding their program

service. But several others appear to have

forgotten that they received their wealth from

people who expected them to work much more

vigorously to relieve and prevent animal

suffering, not just sit on their assets.

A few may still be actively fundraising

chiefly to avoid having the IRS reclassify them

as private foundations, meaning their revenues

would no longer be tax-exempt.

Among the standards unique to ANIMAL

PEOPLE are that we believe an ethical animal

charity should behave in a manner which considers

the welfare of all animals. Just as it would be

unethical for a human welfare charity to

sacrifice the well-being of some people in order

to benefit a chosen few, so ANIMAL PEOPLE

believes it is inherently unethical for an animal

charity to cause some animals to suffer on behalf

of other animals.

For example, ANIMAL PEOPLE finds

unethical any policies which promote the

well-being of some animals, including endangered

species, by encouraging the killing of predators

or competitor species. We likewise find

unethical any policies which encourage the

release or return of animals to habitat where the

animals are unwelcome and may be at high risk of

enduring human cruelty or extermination.

ANIMAL PEOPLE recommends that all food

served for human consumption by or on behalf of

animal charities should be vegetarian or,

better, vegan. This recommendation was

controversial when ANIMAL PEOPLE first

editorially advanced it, in 1995. It is now

widely echoed, including in the food policy of

the Humane Society of the U.S.

ANIMAL PEOPLE believes that an ethical

animal charity should take into consideration the

well-being of the whole of the animal-related

nonprofit sector.

ANIMAL PEOPLE views as inherently

unethical the involvement of an animal protection

charity, or the officers, directors, and other

management of the charity, in any form of crime

except for occasional acts of open civil

disobedience undertaken in connection with

nonviolent protest.

ANIMAL PEOPLE believes that animal

protection charities should not be directed or

managed by persons of felonious criminal history

involving theft, fraud, or violence against

either humans or nonhuman animals. Though this

might seem almost to go without saying,

criminals have several times seized control of

animal charities, exploiting them for personal

gain.

ANIMAL PEOPLE believes that even beyond

the requirements of law, an ethical animal

protection organization must discourage racism,

sexism, sexual predation, discrimination, and

harassment, and that even beyond the

requirements of law, an ethical animal charity

must maintain facilities which are safe, clean,

and physically and emotionally healthy for

animals, visitors, and staff.

ANIMAL PEOPLE believes that if and when

an ethical animal charity finds itself to be in

violation of any of these standards, even if

accidentally and unintentionally, it must

immediately work to resolve the problems.

ANIMAL PEOPLE views as inherently

unethical the use of legal action to attempt to

silence criticism, a trend we noted in the U.S.

several years ago and are now beginning to see in

other nations. ANIMAL PEOPLE believes that

charities and their officers, directors, and

management should view themselves as operating

under public scrutiny, for the public benefit,

and as being therefore public figures, who are

subject to the same kinds of observation,

criticism, commentary, and satire as elected

officials and candidates for public office.

This includes us.

ANIMAL PEOPLE believes that an ethical

animal-related charity, if it employs an outside

fundraiser or fundraising counsel, should hire

only fundraisers or fundraising counsels with no

conflicts of interest, such as simultaneously

representing organizations or political

candidates with goals opposed to those of the

animal-related charity.

The complete ANIMAL PEOPLE standards for

ethical charities, along with our standards for

fundraisers, are accessible at

<www.animalpeoplenews.org>, as well as in the

Watchdog Report, or will be sent on request by

e-mail.

The 2008 ANIMAL PEOPLE Watchdog Report on

Animal Charities may be ordered for $25 per copy

from P.O. Box 960, Clinton, WA 98236;

360-579-2505.

 

 

 

 

--

Merritt Clifton

Editor, ANIMAL PEOPLE

P.O. Box 960

Clinton, WA 98236

 

Telephone: 360-579-2505

Fax: 360-579-2575

E-mail: anmlpepl

Web: www.animalpeoplenews.org

 

[ANIMAL PEOPLE is the leading independent

newspaper providing original investigative

coverage of animal protection worldwide, founded

in 1992. Our readership of 30,000-plus includes

the decision-makers at more than 10,000 animal

protection organizations. We have no alignment

or affiliation with any other entity. $24/year;

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