March 9, 2007 | Read Time: 1 minute
The conservative writer Andrew Sullivan has used his blog to step up his feud with the Human Rights Campaign, a gay-rights advocacy group in Washington, by citing a charity watchdog’s low rating of the organization’s charitable fund.
According to Charity Navigator’s evaluation, which is based on data from the 2005 fiscal year, the Human Rights Campaign Foundation receives one out of four stars in part for spending about 43 percent of its budget on administrative and fund-raising expenses.
In a response from the Human Rights Campaign, the advocacy group writes that Charity Navigator does not accurately reflect its fund’s current finances and that the poor rating was a result of a large effort to raise money for its new national headquarters, which raised overhead costs.
“We estimate that HRCF’s rating on Charity Navigator would rise from one star to three stars for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2006, if data for the capital campaign were removed from the calculation as we understand it,” the group said.
What do you think? Is Mr. Sullivan’s critique of the organization valid? Does Charity Navigator accurately reflect nonprofit groups’ financial efficiency? Click on the comment link just below this posting.
