Animal Charity Extends Its Reach by Joining Forces With Others

THE PHILANTHROPY 400

No. 164

Tom DiCarrado, an animal activist in Cornwall, N.Y., hadn’t paid much attention to the Humane

Society of the United States, one of the animal movement’s biggest and wealthiest organizations, until a couple of years ago. That’s when his favorite charity, the Fund for Animals, affiliated with the Humane Society.

“I had been supporting the fund since its start [in 1967] and never felt a need to look elsewhere,” says Mr. DiCarrado, a retired business consultant. “To me, HSUS was just another animal organization.”

But when the Fund for Animals, a New York organization that runs advocacy campaigns to promote animal-friendly policies and operates animal sanctuaries around the country, joined forces with the Humane Society, Mr. DiCarrado took a good look.

He was impressed, he says, with the Humane Society’s growing size and influence, and he appreciated the cost savings and other efficiencies that appeared to accompany the merger.

He especially liked the work the Humane Society was doing to ensure better treatment of livestock on farms that produce meat, eggs, and milk.

Mr. DiCarrado had been donating about $1,000 to the Fund for Animals each year. But last year, he gave $7,000 to the Humane Society, including separate gifts for its Fund for Animals programs, and this year he intends to increase his contributions by another $3,000.

Mr. DiCarrado is one in a growing army of Humane Society supporters, many of whom have been attracted by the society’s affiliation with other like-minded animal groups.

In addition to its 2005 affiliation with the Fund for Animals, the Humane Society last year brought another organization into its fold: the Doris Day Animal League, a Washington advocacy group.

The Humane Society now has 10.5 million members or supporters — people who have made at least one donation in the past three years — up from 7.4 million five years ago, and a budget of $112-million, up from $75-million just three years ago.

In 2006, the Humane Society raised $113-million, placing it at No. 164 in The Chronicle’s ranking of the 400 organizations that raise the most private money. The figure was down from 2005, when the group benefited from an outpouring of generosity following Hurricane Katrina and raised $132.6-million, but the pace of giving is back up again this year.

‘Subsidiary’ Units

Of the total contributions last year, about $7-million represented gifts earmarked for the Fund for Animals, which, like the Humane Society’s other affiliates, is centrally managed by the Humane Society — sharing personnel-administration and accounting services, for example — but continues to operate programs under its own banner.

Among the group’s other affiliates are the Wildlife Land Trust, which works to preserve wildlife habitats, and the Hollywood Office, which was created in 2002 when the Humane Society absorbed a financially strapped nonprofit group, called the Ark Trust, which monitored how animals were treated on movie sets and other issues involving the use of animals in the entertainment industry.

“I think of them all as subsidiaries,” says Wayne Pacelle, the Humane Society’s chief executive since 2004, of the organizations with which the Humane Society has affiliated. “HSUS is really a constellation of closely related organizations, each adding a slightly different point of emphasis, but all with a single philosophy and a coherent management plan.”

So, for example, he says, the Fund for Animals adds to the Humane Society’s programs to provide direct care for animals, while the Doris Day Animal League, organized as a 501(c)(4) advocacy group under federal tax laws, adds lobbying might.

His goal, Mr. Pacelle says, is to continue to expand the organization, not by gobbling up smaller players in the animal-movement field but by joining forces with them, capitalizing on their strengths, and eliminating duplicated efforts. His group, Mr. Pacelle says, is exploring the possibility of affiliations with at least three other animal organizations, but he declined to identify the groups or comment on the talks. In all, he says, the moves would be about making the Humane Society a more potent force for change.

“A more powerful, efficient organization means a more effective advocate for social reform as we try to move the needle in favor of more and more animal protection in this country,” Mr. Pacelle says.

Concern About Motives

The Humane Society’s critics offer a different interpretation of the organization’s growth strategy: “It’s all about acquiring money,” says David Martosko, director of research at the Center for Consumer Freedom, a nonprofit group supported by food companies and restaurants that advocates free choice. And, he says, the Humane Society is collecting that money based on “misdirection and confusion.”

Mr. Martosko says that a survey commissioned by his organization last spring found that 63 percent of people who donate to the Humane Society falsely believe their contributions are going to their local animal shelters.

The Humane Society provides training, assistance, and grant money to local shelters, but is not otherwise connected with them.

“This is a group spending millions on political campaigns, ballot initiatives, lobbying, and legislative campaigns on the national and state level pushing a hard-core agenda, like trying to get milk and meat out of school lunches, and then they send fund-raising letters with kittens and puppies on them like they are helping your pets,” Mr. Martosko says. “They have a pattern of deception that should concern the public.”

Mr. Martosko adds that the Humane Society uses its different entities to hide expenses, pushing around fund-raising costs, for example, to make it appear that it spends less than it does to raise money.

Mr. Pacelle counters that the Humane Society’s records of accomplishments, programs, and spending are “unambiguous and absolutely transparent,” and that no one is being misled about the group’s mission or intentions.

“Just take a look at our Web site and you’ll see who we are,” Mr. Pacelle says. “We do care about your cats and dogs — we have a campaign against puppy mills — just like we work to eliminate cruelty against all kinds of animals.”

Expanded Efforts

The Humane Society’s new logo — composed of 19 different animals in the shape of the United States — helps illustrate the organization’s expanding operations and reach.

Two years ago the group started a legal unit that is handling about 35 active cases, mostly lawsuits filed where the Humane Society believes animal-protection laws are not being properly enforced. The organization, for example, filed a class-action lawsuit in Florida this summer against a pet store that the lawsuit alleges sells sick dogs, in violation of state law.

In 2004, the Humane Society formed a separate lobbying arm, called the Humane Society Legislative Fund, which has pursued an ambitious slate of state and federal animal-protection laws, spending about $2.5-million on its advocacy work so far this year. Last year, for the first time, the lobbying group got directly involved in supporting specific candidates running for elected office, spending $600,000 to back or oppose candidates based on their record on animal-welfare issues.

In recent years, too, the Humane Society has created a Campaigns Department, building separate staffs and programs to concentrate on some of the group’s defining issues, like ending dog fighting and cockfighting.

One of the campaign areas, equine protection, which focuses in part on eradicating the practice of killing horses for their meat, got a boost with the Doris Day Animal League affiliation. Equine issues were among the top priorities at Doris Day, so the Humane Society expanded its own programs to save horses with the goal of better serving Doris Day supporters and putting the expertise of some of the Doris Day staff members to good use.

G. Thomas Waite III, the Humane Society’s chief financial officer, says savings created by the affiliations with Doris Day and the Fund for Animals have helped pay for most of the new programs.

For example, he says, the groups have realized annual savings of $280,000 by folding the Fund for Animals’ public-relations department into the Humane Society’s offices, and another $167,000 by using the Humane Society’s vendors and volume discounts to send out Doris Day direct-mail pieces.

“With mergers you pick up efficiencies and economies of scale,” Mr. Waite says. “You reduce infrastructure costs and eliminate overlapping programs and services, and then you are able to redirect your savings and your money to where it is needed most.”

The Humane Society relies on its huge members’ list for much of its budget. Roughly 70 percent of the money the group raised last year, or about $80-million, came from individuals, with an average gift of between $12 and $16.

Concerted efforts in recent years to lessen its reliance on direct mail have begun to pay off, though. Small gifts from mailed solicitations accounted for about 47 percent of total revenue last year, down from nearly 65 percent in 2002.

The Humane Society has more consistently sought foundation support — last year it received $2.7-million in foundation grants — and has put more staff and resources behind encouraging donors to make larger gifts and bequests or other planned gifts.

This summer, the Humane Society received its single biggest donation ever from a living donor: $2.5-million from Leslie Lee Alexander, the billionaire owner of the Houston Rockets basketball team and a member of the animal group’s board.

And in the coming months, the organization plans to start its first capital campaign.

The five-year, $100-million fund-raising drive will seek to attract donations for a range of purposes, with donors given the chance to earmark their gifts for certain efforts.

One of those campaign priorities may already have a head start. The Humane Society’s work to end the practice of dogfighting, which is illegal but still widespread, has garnered a good deal of attention lately because of the high-profile case involving the professional football player Michael Vick.

Mr. Vick admitted this summer to financing a dogfighting operation that involved dozens of pit bulls, which were seized by state and federal officials. The Humane Society raised money to help pay for care of the dogs, and to continue its efforts to strengthen the enforcement of laws against animal fighting.

Humane Society officials say that the group’s high profile during the media coverage of the Vick case led to 215,000 people adding their names to its e-mail list to get more information about the organization and its efforts to curb dogfighting.

Mr. Pacelle, the Humane Society’s president, says such interest in the Vick case demonstrates how Americans, in general, are warming up to animal issues.

“There’s more fertile soil than there’s ever been,” he says. “Some of the attention and interest comes about because of external events, like the Vick case, some of it is because we are doing a better job bringing the movement together by working with other organizations and growing together. Either way, we are catching a social wave, and the idea of animal protection is moving from the margin to the mainstream.”

Mr. DiCarrado, the donor in New York, agrees.

He sees more and more people beginning to identify with what he calls “the responsibility of humans, who are at the top of the chain, to show compassion for nonhuman animals.” And, he says, he is pleased that a top, national nonprofit group is gaining influence and traction to spread the word.