HSUS Earns Some Detention

The April/May charity guide of the American Institute of Philanthropy/CharityWatch is out—and HSUS once again earns an “unsatisfactory" grade of “D.” Even PETA isn’t that low (C+). HSUS has now earned a “D” grade for almost two years.

CharityWatch finds that HSUS spends as little as 50 percent of its budget on actual programs—meaning up to half of HSUS’s budget is reserved for overhead costs like tens of millions spent on fundraising.

CharityWatch also finds that it takes HSUS up to 48 cents to raise every dollar in contributions—a grossly inefficient figure. (Click the image to enlarge.)

These findings are slightly different than those in the December 2011 CharityWatch guide. At that time, CharityWatch found HSUS spent as little 49 percent of its budget on programs. So we have newer data, and it’s more of the same. At this rate, it’ll be a decade before HSUS ventures up to the “C” range (spending 60 percent of its budget on programs).

That’s assuming HSUS is interested in getting its act into shape. We suspect it will just rely on weaker charity-rating assessments and subjective popularity measures instead of spending its donors’ dollars in a more appropriate way. And it’ll keep misleading people by claiming it spends 78 percent of its budget on programs—a laughable statement.

Maybe there’s a reason for all those sad-looking, abandoned dogs and cats in HSUS’s ads. They know that after HSUS scams Americans out of their doggie dollars, local shelters will hardly see a dime.