The Whole Pie

The Massachusetts Attorney General publishes a Report on Professional Solicitations for Charities annually. This year's report has caused a stir (at least in the Boston Globe) since it reports that charities received only 43% of the money that was raised; the rest went to the professional fundraisers.

Last year New York's Attorney General brought a case against four professional fundraising telemarketers who employed deceptive and unfair tactics. These deceptive tactics included in some cases lying about how much of the money the charity would receive. It turned out, on average, these professional fundraisers were keeping 76% of the money they raised.

All is not lost though, there are various ways that one can determine the amount a charity will receive. Sometimes this information is right on the charity's website. You can also ask for the information from the telemarketer in writing. Finally, checking to see if the fundraiser is a member of the Association of Fundraising Professionals can help. This association has a code of ethics to which they ascribe.

Another way to determine generally how much of the money you give to a charity goes toward furthering their mission is to check a website like Charity Navigator. It will give you and idea of the charity's organizational efficiency, organizational capacity as well as an income statement usually including how much the ceo is paid.

We thought that this might be a timely post considering the recent series of Boston Globe articles on the topic. We want to assure you that our library does not use professional fundraisers. As we mentioned in a past post, we are a non-profit and there are a number of ways that you can donate to the library before the end of the year. The most direct way is probably through our annual fund, which you can donate to by clicking here.