{"id":217899,"date":"2010-01-12T19:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-13T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"tag:consumerfreedom.com:\/\/4f5413bf2348c3477b08c86c7eb3b3b4"},"modified":"2010-01-12T19:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-01-13T00:00:00","slug":"hsus-got-a-c-minus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/217899","title":{"rendered":"HSUS Got a C-Minus"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span>Sometimes it&rsquo;s hard to listen to the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.consumerfreedom.com\/news_detail.cfm\/h\/4063-court-decision-bullhooks-hsus-exec\">self-serving hacks<\/a> at the deceptive <a href=\"http:\/\/activistcash.com\/organization_overview.cfm\/o\/136-humane-society-of-the-united-states\">&ldquo;Humane Society&rdquo; of the United States<\/a> (HSUS) jabber about how pure of heart they are. Despite <a href=\"http:\/\/www.consumerfreedom.com\/news_detail.cfm\/h\/4062-unpacking-the-hsus-gravy-train\">earmarking less than one-half of one percent of its budget for funding hands-on pet shelters<\/a>, HSUS often gets a free pass in media reports and in political circles. It&rsquo;s enough to make us yearn for an impartial charity-rating service to judge just <a href=\"http:\/\/www.vidoosh.tv\/play.php?vid=4360\">how virtuously the group deploys<\/a> the donations reaped in its &ldquo;19 dollars a month&rdquo; TV ads.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Voil&agrave;! In its December 2009 <i>Charity Rating Guide<\/i>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.charitywatch.org\/\">the American Institute of Philanthropy<\/a> (AIP) gives HSUS and its Humane Society Legislative Fund (formerly the Fund for Animals) <b>an unimpressive &ldquo;C-minus&rdquo; grade<i>.<\/i><\/b> Unlike other ratings services whose judgments are easily manipulated, AIP is a fiercely <a href=\"http:\/\/www.charitywatch.org\/aboutaip.html\">independent<\/a> nonprofit charity watchdog.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/consumerfreedom.com\/images\/2010-01-13_AIP_HSUS.jpg\"><span><input type=\"image\" height=\"67\" width=\"520\" src=\"http:\/\/consumerfreedom.com\/images\/2010-01-13_AIP_HSUS_crop.jpg\" longdesc=\"undefined\" \/><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<p><span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.charitywatch.org\/criteria.html\">AIP based its grade<\/a> largely on the percentage of HSUS&rsquo;s money that it spends actually running its programs (which can be as little as 53 percent), and the amount of money it spends on fundraising (as much as $40 spent to generate every $100 donation). It also penalized HSUS for paying exorbitant salaries to its top executives (as high as $234,000), and for sitting on enormous cash reserves ($187 million in assets at the end of 2008).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>We suspect HSUS&rsquo;s grade would fall to an &ldquo;F&rdquo; if AIP tried to measure the chasm between what HSUS donors believe they&rsquo;re funding and what the group actually spends its money on. While that&rsquo;s a hard thing to quantify, the question of &ldquo;What <i>is <\/i>a humane society, anyway&rdquo; is certainly a reasonable one to ask.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b><i><span>Watch this space in the coming weeks as we prepare to make a more regular effort at unmasking one of the phoniest charities in America.<\/span><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sometimes it&rsquo;s hard to listen to the self-serving hacks at the deceptive &ldquo;Humane Society&rdquo; of the United States (HSUS) jabber about how pure of heart they are. Despite earmarking less than one-half of one percent of its budget for funding hands-on pet shelters, HSUS often gets a free pass in media reports and in political [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4054,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-217899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4054"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217899\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}