CCF in the News: HSUS Called to Account

Our Humanewatch project is creating quite a stir with its findings that less than two-fifths of one percent of Humane Society of the United States donations supports the operations of local pet shelters. This is despite the fact that in a national poll 70 percent of respondents said that they thought HSUS was an umbrella organization of local animal shelter groups.

From West Virginia to Texas, local media outlets are taking notice, telling their viewers and readers what CCF has known for some time: the vast majority of HSUS donations aren’t going to shelters that help find homes for the nation’s homeless puppies and kittens.

So if donations aren’t going to local humane societies, where is the HSUS putting its cash? From what we can determine from tax records, fundraising (so inefficient in HSUS’s case that it warranted a D grade from the American Institute of Philanthropy), lobbying, and executive compensation and pensions are certainly up there as priorities for the so-called “Humane Society” of the United States.

Del Nesmith, a representative of the Humane Society of Odessa, Texas, reported in an interview on KWES NBC Newswest 9 how helpful the Humane Society of the United States was to his shelter animals’ needs:

I contacted the national humane society and I asked them for help to help us find some or donate some food for the animals and they wouldn’t even give me the time of day, hardly. In fact, they were rude about it in the office.

Perhaps if Mr. Nesmith had been asking for help with a ballot initiative that would raise the price of eggs, looking to rehabilitate his public image, or soliciting work for a fundraising firm, the national office would have been less rude.