HSUS: Dreadful Charity Practices

hree times a year, the venerable American Institute of Philanthropy (AIP) analyzes publicly reported information from charities and issues a report card grading how well these organizations spend their money. Unlike other charity analysts, AIP digs past the face-value data to get a more accurate measure of how effective a charity is.

In its latest report, AIP gives the deceptively named Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) a "D" grade, yet again. Last year, AIP gave HSUS a "D" grade, twice, due to the animal rights group's lackluster performance in using donors' contributions. Even the organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has a "C-plus" grade.

AIP finds that HSUS spends up to 49 cents to raise every dollar and spends as little as 49 percent of its budget on programs.

This is similar to the findings of Animal People News' Watchdog Report, which analyzed HSUS' 2008 tax return and found that up to half of HSUS' budget is spent on overhead costs.

It's worse when you consider that HSUS' grossly inefficient spending is likely done with a lot of money that donors intended to go to real humane societies, such as their local pet shelter, and not an animal rights group.

According to national polling, 71 percent of Americans mistake HSUS for a pet-shelter umbrella group, and 63 percent wrongly believe that HSUS is affiliated with their local humane society or pet shelter. In reality, HSUS shockingly shares less than one percent of its budget with these needy local shelters.

Reprinted in part from humanewatch.org