HSUS Donors are Flushing Their Money Away

In the past I have detailed the direct mail accounting shenanigans of HSUS, noting that by my calculations, HSUS is spending about 75 cents of every dollar raised in the mail on sending out more direct mail.

If HSUS wants to challenge my math, I have a standing invitation to a free lunch; I work around the corner from their main office in Washington, D.C. and if they will bring the direct mail accounting books (membership staff salaries and benefits, postage, printing, caging, envelope, list acquisition, lasering, computer services, creative costs, management and office space), I will pick up the lunch tab and we will have a grand old time making columns of numbers showing the income and outgo from their direct mail program.

My point here is not to demonize HSUS.   HSUS does a few small bits of good (not much bang for the buck, but a little) and the direct mail numbers at HSUS are not too far out of line with those of other direct mail-driven organizations.

So am I upset about the amazing amounts of wasted money?  A little, but compared to what? If one is looking for wasted money in the world of dogs, it's a lot easier to point to the jaw-dropping sums spent on dog shows in this country. Wow!

But I do not salute nonsense, and the notion that HSUS is primarily about helping poor shelter animals is complete hokum.

The Humane Society of the U.S. is primarily about direct mail and, as I have noted:

The direct mail business is not about saving the lives of cats and dogs but about management contracts, laser printing, #10 carrier envelopes, bar codes, caging operations, business reply envelopes, and rising pre-sorted non-profit postage rates. In short, it's about money.

HSUS's direct mail operation targets senior citizens who are led to believe they are helping poor dumb animals down at the local shelter.

This is the LIE that the Humane Society of the U.S. has maintained for more than 50 years.

More recently I noted that while HSUS claims 11 million members on its web site, the real due-paying membership of the organization is less than 450,000, a more than 24-fold exaggeration.

Now let's get around to the money HSUS raises money through the telephone. 

You see HSUS not only raises money through the mail -- they also make a lot of telephone calls. The economics here are pretty grim however, a point that has been made by no less of an authority than the State of New York.

In a 168-page report entitled Pennies for Charity:  Where Your Money Goes, the New York State Charities Bureau took a look at the telemarketing numbers behind charities operating in New York State, and what they found was disturbing:  Charities, on average, only kept 31 percent of the money raised through the telephone. The rest went to those greasy bottom-feeding telemarketers that call you right as you are about to sit down for dinner, or just as you come home from work.

Of course that 31 percent number is the average.

Some groups, like HSUS, did far worse. How much worse can be seen on page 29 of the report, where we learn that of the $1,083,071 raised on the telephone in New York state by HSUS in 2000, only $16,543 went back to the charity -- just 1.53 percent.

To put it another way, more than 98 percent of the money donated to HSUS by telephone in New York State went to fund a telemarketer's boiler room operation.

To put it another way, in 2000 HSUS gave more money to telemarketers in New York state than it did to ALL the dog and cat shelters in the U.S. that same year. A more than 98 percent waste on top of their "divide by 24" membership number.

Still think HSUS is a charity helping dogs and cats?  Think again!
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The Vanishing Members of the HSUS

I work in an office around the corner from Wayne Pacelle, the President and CEO of the Humane Society of the U.S.  We have never met, but any time he wants to bring over his direct mail accounting records I am more than happy to buy him lunch.  Fair warning, however: I am a black belt in direct mail accounting practices, and I do not salute nonsense.   And there is a lot of nonsense in HSUS's direct mail accounting.

Take their membership numbers, for example.

A while back, I was quoted in a cover story in HSUS's All Animals magazine about the "The Purebred Paradox."  Supposedly this magazine went to all of HSUS's 11 million members.

Eleven million members?!  Really?  That's a jaw-dropping number.  The NRA has only 2 million members.   

And so, I waited to get an email or a phone call from someone, somewhere who had actually read the article.  Nothing.  

OK, I have a common name.  A lot of people who know me don't even know I have dogs -- I have a larger life than that found at the end of a leash.  There is no reason for most people to associate me with dogs.  No matter.

But surely a cover story in the flag ship publication of the Humane Society of the U.S. about painful health defects intentionally being bred for in pedigree dogs would generate a little secondary reporting in newspapers and magazines around the country?

Nope.  Nothing.  It was like the article was never written.  Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.

Which got me to wondering.  Did anyone, anywhere, actually really read this story at all?  What were the Humane Society's real membership numbers?  Could HSUS political power be a lie and a complete fabrication?

Hard to imagine, but guess what?    It's true!

HSUS's membership is not eleven million.  It's not ten million.  It's not five million, two million or even one million.  

The true membership of HSUS is less than 450,000 people.  That's the total print run of All Animals magazine, which is mailed to every HSUS member that gives $25 or more, and I assure you that this entire print run is not actually mailed to dues-paying HSUS members.   My best guess is that no more than one in ten people read the magazine's cover story -- 45,000 people or so.  No wonder that article made less noise than a penny thrown down a well!

But don't just take my word about HSUS's membership numbers.  You see, if you are willing to wade through a 115-page document, you can find those numbers yourself, buried on page 89 of the report they file every year with the Internal Revenue Service.  This is the same federal agency that nailed Al Capone.

So where does that 11 million number come from which the HSUS features so prominently on its web site?  

It's a complete untruth. A magical fabrication.  A fantastic fraud. 

It's a LIE.  Eleven million is not even in the same time zone as the truth.

So why lie?  What's that all about?

Simple:  Lying is how the Humane Society of the U.S. claims unearned political power.

HSUS figures they can lie to their members, the press, Congress, and state legislatures and no one will ever bother to check because no one will ever bother to wade through that 115-page IRS form.

But I did.  And you can too, by simply going to this link.

Now to be clear, a lot of organizations lie about their membership numbers.  The most common gambit is to assume that every dues-paying member also represents a spouse or an adult child who might also support the core mission of the organization. 

Fair enough, I suppose. 

But what HSUS has done is truly unprecedented.   You see, they have not inflated their true dues-paying membership number by a factor of two or three.... but by more than 24.

Divide by twenty-four.  

That's what the board of HSUS and all their supporters should do. 

Divide by twenty-four.

Take the salary of Wayne Pacelle -- more than $240,000 a year -- and divide by 24 to see if that "mathematical adjustment" might clarify the extent of the lie that HSUS continues to perpetrate on the American people

Divide by twenty-four. 

That's the scope of the lie, and that's why I do not expect to get a call or an email from Mr. Pacelle this week taking me up on my offer to buy him a free lunch if he only will bring along HSUS's direct mail accounting records.  Some free lunches are simply too expensive to accept!

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When Direct Mail Is a Threat to Dogs

In the last week we have seen PeTA and the Humane Society of the U.S. inject themselves into the arena of pedigree dog health.

Wayne Pacelle wrote a piece over on his blog, trying to inject himself into the debate, while PeTA crashed center ring at the Westminster dog show with two activists holding placards that were laughably off-message.

My position is pretty simple: direct mail professionals and vegan clowns will not improve the debate on the health and future of pedigree dogs.

Here's a thought: The men and women who actually care about dogs have brought this debate up to to this point, and they continue to move things along quite smartly.

Maybe they don't need any "help" from people whose primary interest in dogs is direct mail fundraising?

Of course, I am not the first to say it.

Jemima Harrison, the producer of BBC's Pedigree Dogs Exposed, has already blasted PeTA for its stunt theatrics, noting that the world hardly needs a lesson in dog health from a group that kills 97% of the dogs brought to its shelter.

So why are PeTA and HSUS suddenly so interested in dog health?

It is not because these are new issues!

In fact, this debate is as old as the Humane Society and far older than PeTA. But for more than 100 years, the "humane" movement has said nothing. Problem? What problem?

In fact, as I have noted in the past, this silence was not entirely accidental. The animal rights movement and the parade of mutants we see in the Kennel Club show ring today are different roses that have sprouted from the same root. And that root has nothing to do with dogs.

"Pedigree people have pedigree dogs" sniff the over-weight matrons of the Kennel Club who seek to associate their common lives with aristocrats or historical figures who once owned "their" breed.

"And pedigree people do not abuse animals by hunting them, or eating them" sniff the under-weight vegans of PeTA who are trying to find a "cause" that will elevate their lives over the humdrum.

For both sides, the only "work" required of a dog is for it sit on a couch.

And that's why both sides are so dangerous to dogs.

You see, most dog types and breeds were created for something: improved function.

Herding dogs were created to herd.

Livestock guarding dogs were created to guard.

Terriers and dachshunds were created to go down tight holes to bolt or battle a fox or badger.

Pointers and setters were created to hold steady over birds -- first for nets, and later for firearms.

Retrievers were designed to retrieve shot birds, tossed boat lines, and pretty much anything else a human might suggest.

But of course the folks at PeTA and HSUS do not buy the premise.

These organizations are actually opposed to hunting and herding.

Have a husky pull a sled? That's cruel!

Have a greyhound catch a rabbit on the fly? That's cruel!

Have a collie herd sheep? Thats cruel!

PeTA and HSUS deny the functional reason hunting, herding, and pulling dogs exist.

For PeTA and HSUS the only purpose of a dog is to be a pet.

And since a pet has no real function other than not to bite the hand that feeds it, there is no need for dog breeds at all.

Knowing this, why would anyone ever listen to HSUS or PeTA when it comes to breed health?

A concern about breed health assumes you actually care about the breed.

But, of course, that is a bit hard when you have open contempt for the work that breed was created to do!

Which is not to say that the AKC and the Kennel Club are not thrilled to see PeTA and the HSUS start talking about canine health.

Perfect!'

Now the kennel clubs can try to frame the "debate" as being about "animal right lunatics" who are in opposition to all canine work and breed purposes, versus kennel club "dog experts".

And never mind that the Kennel Club's dog "experts" have never dug a terrier, shot a bird, hitched a sled, or coursed a rabbit.

And never mind that this debate was created and is being pursued by those who have put "Dogs First" rather than direct mail economics.

Neither side cares about that now.

For PeTA and HSUS this looks like a new topic with which to fill their direct mail coffers.

For the kennel clubs, this looks like a new development which can be used to deflect serious charges about pedigree dog health and welfare.

Each will try to use the other to carry on with their "business as usual."

And if that happens, the dogs are sure to suffer.
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The Good News Is I Found Me Specticals ...

Yesterday's post on the Humane Society of the U.S. being a direct mail mill started off as a comment, by me, to an excellent piece by Gina Spadafori over at the Pet Connection blog.

Her post, of course was in response to Wayne Pacelle's blog post about the No-Kill movement.

Pacelle's blog post, was in turn, a response to Nathan Winograd's book Redemption and the kind of publicity Gina, Christie Keith, and others have given it.

Read Winograd's book, but I have written a pretty detailed summary of it entitled Beyond the Blue Solution of Dog Shelter Death for those that are book-averse (Shame on you!)

My comments about the Humane Society of the U.S. being a direct mail machine was followed up by a good question from another poster, which I answered in a piece detailing the Direct Mail Economics of the Humane Movement.

To be fair, this post really details the direct mail economics of direct mail fright-factory organizations in general. HSUS is not distinctive in the way it operates, only in its scale of operation.

All of this history, of course, is just an excuse to post a bunch of links, and for me to steal Gina's picture of a terrier with spectacles (posted at top right).

I saw that wonderful little picture, grinned, and thought of the voice over:

"All right now, I've found me spectacles.
Now then, where are me testicles?"

Trooper, of course, did not think much of the joke. He wouldn't. Poor thing.

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Why the Humane Society Will Never Change

Gina Spadafori over at the Pet Connection blog has written a very nice piece about the Humane Society of the U.S., and Wayne Pacelle's efforts to woo her over. Read the whole thing.

The good news is that Gina is appropriately skeptical, and she is (as usual) fair. In short, she says some nice things about some of the HSUS staffers that she has known, even as she questions the intentions, veracity and follow-through of Wayne Pacelle, the head of the Humane Society.

Gina correctly notes that the HSUS is different from PETA. She is right; they are not identical organizations.

PETA, you see, is ideology driven.

Ideologues believe in something, however wrong it might be.

The Humane Society of the U.S., however, is not ideological. It is a pure direct mail machine.

Direct mail mills are not about ideology; they are about 1 percent return rates.

If a direct mail mill's rate of return drops below 1%, it will test a new direct mail package until it finds one that produces better. The story may change (and the the story may in fact be nothing more than a lie heaped on a distortion), but the methods and actions of the organization do not.

How do you write a good direct mail letter? Simple: You follow the age-old direct mail mantra that “the heart out pulls the head,” and you target naïve senior citizens and ask them for their "most generous contribution at this critical time."

It's best if the letters are as emotion-laden as possible. Response rates can be goosed up by adding stickers or pictures of horrors to be avoided, or kittens to be saved. Top it all off with a fake sense of urgency and -- voila -- you have a direct mail package.

But have no illusion: direct mail letters are not necessarily about the truth. They are about return rates.

This is not to say that the Humane Society does not do some good. They do.

Nor is to say that the Humane Society of the U.S. is populated by resident evil. That is not true either.

That said, it is important to understand what this organization is really about, and who has the REAL power within the HSUS.

The Humane Society is mostly about direct mail. The direct mail business is not about saving the lives of cats and dogs but about management contracts, laser printing, #10 carrier envelopes, bar codes, caging operations, business reply envelopes, and rising pre-sorted non-profit postage rates. In short, it's about money.

HSUS's direct mail operation targets senior citizens who are lead to believe they are helping poor dumb animals down at the local shelter.

This is the LIE that the Humane Society of the U.S. has maintained for more than 50 years.

To be fair, Mr Pacelle is simply the latest keeper of this lie. The fact that it is an old lie, however, has not improved its odor.

Gina tell us that the Humane Society of the U.S. is trying to suggest it is no longer serving up the same old bull. Instead, Wayne Pacelle would have us believe his organization is in the process of change because now it is now trying to serve us "elderly male cow” instead.

Gina is skeptical. She suspects Mr. Pacelle is little more than a wordsmith. She is right. But what she may not fully understand is that even if Wayne Pacelle wanted to change the HSUS, he could not.

You see, direct mail is VERY EXPENSIVE and the salaries of the top folks at HSUS are dependent upon keeping HSUS membership numbers up. If membership numbers fall for two years in a row, Mr. Pacelle will be shot out of his seat like a human canon ball.

And so, Mr. Pacelle is focused on keeping membership numbers up. And the only way to keep those numbers up is to by stoking the cash-guzzling flying machine called direct mail.

And so millions of emotion-laden direct mail letters will be sent out this holiday season to elderly Americans in hopes that at least one-in-a-hundred will reach the door of a naïve and poorly informed person who will write a check.

Never mind that the letters are packed with lies, distortions, and contrived crisis.

Never mind that the hard-earned retirement money of America's seniors is not going where people think it is.

Would people donate if they knew 70 cents out of every dollar they gave to HSUS was spent to send out more direct mail?

NO. So the Humane Society does not tell them. Instead, it counts direct mail as a "program cost," under the theory that their main mission is not to help animals through direct action, but to agitate people into giving more money so that more direct mail letters can be sent out.

Would folks continue to donate to HSUS if they knew the organization did almost nothing to help fund local animal shelters?

NO. So this fact is not said.

Instead, the truth is parsed and purged, and the stories are carefully constructed and orchestrated by professional direct mail liars for hire.

The stories change, but the business plan remains the same. The organizational sail may have to be reefed in, let out, or recut to fit the shifting winds of public opinion, but it will always be bent to the twisted timber of the direct mail business. And why is that? Simple. It's because direct mail is core the business of the Humane Society of the U.S.

The bottom line is the bottom line. Wayne Pacelle and his direct mail contractors know they are dependent upon the age-old "say anything" and "do nothing" strategy of all direct mail mills.

The trick is to say anything to keep direct mail returns up, and to do as little as possible that will actually cost any real money beyond the needs of the direct mail machine, and the salary needs of a dozen top HSUS executives.

One way a direct mail organization like HSUS can fool people into thinking they are doing something is to FAKE IT by taking credit for the work being done by others.

That is what Mr. Pacelle and his organization are now doing when it comes to the push to No Kill shelters. Gina says Wayne Pacelle sounds like he is “channeling Maddie’s Fund.” She is being far too kind. In reality Mr. Pacelle is engaged in the intellectual and moral theft of the work of others.

Mr. Pacelle is trying to steal success he did not earn, even as he tries to marginalize those who are actually leading the push for substantive change.

The good news is that HSUS is apparently feeling the heat.

The bad news is that it can never see the light, because it is welded to a direct mail mill business plan based on words, rather than direct action where it really counts.

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• READ This Related Post about how the "humane" movement in the U.S. came to be at the forefront of killing over 5 million dogs and cats a year ... and why they continue to ignore ways of changing the way they do business. Read >> Beyond the "Blue Solution" of Dog Shelter Death

Direct Mail Economics of the Humane Movement

In response to the above post about HSUS being a direct mail machine, "2catmom" asks how I figure that 70-75 cents out of every dollar that folks give in response to a Humane Society of the U.S direct mail letter actually goes to underwrite more direct mail.

She notes that "Charity Navigator," a charity-ranking site, says that "only 13.8% of funds raised [by HSUS] goes to support fundraising, and 79% of funds goes to programs."

Good question! There are two answers to this, the short one and the long one. The short answer gives you the whole story, but the long answer answer gives you the illuminating detail which shows you how HSUS and other direct mail mills work -- and why your grandmother's mail box is always so full.

First the short answer. "Charity Navigator" and most other charity-ranking sites allow organizations to claim most of their direct mail costs as a "program expense."

In fact, a huge portion of what is listed as a "program expense" for HSUS is really nothing more than direct mail costs for paper, printing, postage, name acquisition, and consultants to manage the direct mail machine.

Or, to put it bluntly, HSUS and many other nonprofit organizations lie, and charity ranking sites like "Charity Navigator" simply repeat those lies.

Think about it.

HSUS claims it has nearly 10 million members (Google it) and yet it also says it spends only $11.9 million on fundraising?

Those two number cannot sit on the same page with truth.

You cannot send membership renewal and special appeal letters to 10 million people for the expenses they are quoting for fundraising, much less send out prospect mailings to scores of millions of other people across the U.S. to replace all the HSUS members who will not renew their membership this year and every year (a majority of all new members).

Something is clearly wrong with the numbers on the Charity Navigator site, and as a 25-year veteran nonprofit manager I will tell you where the error is: the fundraising expense number.

These things are known lies and charity-ranking sites like Charity Navigator simply wink at the lie.

Why is this kind of cost-shifting allowed? Good question! All I can say for sure is that it is allowed by folks like Charity Navigator, and even by the IRS on their form 990 reports which are the public records you can get on all 501(c)3 nonprofit organizations.

I suppose this should be no surprise. The direct mail "charity" industry is a multi-billion dollar a year business, and like every other business they have written the law to suit their own ends. Never mind that counting most direct mail costs as a "program" expense is a lie.

All of this reminds me of the old Abraham Lincoln riddle:

Honest Abe: How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg?

Answer: Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.

The fact that the direct mail industry has spent a lot of time, money and influence getting the IRS and folks like Charity Navigator to allow them to call direct mail costs a "program expense" does not make it so.

What it does do, however, is support the essential truth I made in my earlier post: The core business of many nonprofit organizations really IS direct mail. That IS their "program."

OK, that's the short answer: They lie. See the Lincoln riddle, above.

What about the long answer? For that, you might want to have paper and pencil ready, as a little math might be involved.

The first point to know is that the IRS allows nonprofit groups like HSUS to calculate what "percentage" of their direct mail letters are to be counted as "fundraising."

The calculations to support these numbers are pretty amusing. If they have a 4-page letter (the average length) which sets out "the problem" for 3.5 pages and asks for a gift in the last half page, then 87 percent of the letter is deemed to be "education" and listed as a "program expense," and only 13 percent or so is deemed to be "fundraising."

If you think this makes sense, you are ready to join the Washington, D.C. nonprofit direct mail industry.

In fact, a direct mail letter is no more about "education" than a used care salesman's pitch is about auto mechanics. Both exist for one reason: to close the sale and separate you from your wallet.

In my earlier post I stressed that HSUS and PETA are not so different from many nonprofit organizations that are banging on your mail box this time of year.

Because that is so, it's worth spending a little time looking at the economics of direct mail, and explaining how it all really works.

I think, if you follow my narrative, you will see I am really quite conservative when I say 70 to 75 cents out of every dollar most folks give to HSUS will simply go to paying for more direct mail. The real figure, for the average donor to HSUS, is well over 100 percent.

1. The lowest-cost direct mail solicitation letter will cost about 50 cents a unit if you are printing and lasering in massive quantities (and I mean really big numbers) and doing everything as cheaply as possible. The names and addresses alone will cost you about 10 cents a unit, plus there is the cost of postage, printing, mail merge (the purging of duplicate names acquired from multiple list-vendors), the cost of lasering the addresses and salutation, etc. The figures I am quoting here are VERY conservative and are not up to date. Real package production numbers are likely to top well over 75 cents a unit by now, even if you are printing in volumes that would shut down a landfill. No matter. Let's use the lower number anyway.
   
   
2. The return rate on "new prospect" direct mail is about 1 percent. This means that out of 100 letters that are sent out, only ONE business reply envelope will come back to the sending organization with a donation in it. For environmentalists out there, this means about 6 pounds of paper (which is generally not recyclable due to the use of gummed stickers, window envelopes, coated stock, and staples) will be sent out in order to raise just ONE direct mail donor for a nonprofit organization.
   


3. How much money will this ONE donor give to the organization he joins? Not much. The average direct mail donor to an organization like HSUS will give a gift of $25.
   


4. Those with a paper and pencil are, no doubt, trying to figure out how anyone can make money on direct mail. After all, based on the numbers I have quoted here, every person that joins a nonprofit organization like HSUS is actually COSTING that organization $20 to $30 per person. How can that be?



5. The answer is that HSUS and other direct mail organizations make money by going back to their membership again and again asking them to give more and more money. For example, if you joined the Humane Society of the U.S. last year, you are sure to have received a "Special Appeal" from HSUS asking you to give more more money for the "special" cause of dealing with the Michael Vick dog fighting case (never mind that HSUS had nothing to do with those dogs or that case). Special appeals like this are regular fair for every nonprofit organization, and lightning-fast "creative teams" are hired to hammer out the direct mail copy, produce the art, and get the production out and in the mail in very short order.
   
   
6. The response rates for Special Appeals are much higher than for new-membership solicitation pieces (called acquisition or prospect pieces), but they still garner only a 15 percent response rate for even a very successful program and an excellent appeal. The good news here, however, is that a 15 percent response rate for a Special Appeal is a very cash-positive thing. If the average donation to a Special Appeal is $20, and the special appeal costs $1 a unit (Special Appeals generally costs more than acquisition packages due to smaller print runs), then a $100 investment in a direct mail package sent to 100 new members will generate $300, for a net profit of $200. Since the organization will be sending out four Special Appeals a year, this works out to be $800 in to help defray the $2,500 acquisition cost of adding those 100 new members to the organization's roles in the first place. You still have a massive deficit, but we are making progress at reducing it.
   
   
7. More money comes in from Membership Renewals. An organization like HSUS can expect to have 75 percent of its first-time members never renew. In short, 75 out of 100 first year HSUS members are going to be total economic losses for HSUS. On the other hand, 25 percent of HSUS's membership are likely to renew, so that loser of a 1 percent "prospect" mailing becomes a cash-generating machine when it is recycled as a renewal letter. A renewal package will cost about $1 a unit (due to smaller mailing volumes and higher production costs), but a $100 investment here can be expected to bring in $700 or so, for a total "profit" of $600 per 100-person renewal mailing.
   
   
8. Now, if you are following along, you will see that over time we are recouping our money. Though we had huge costs up front, and a massive negative cash flow that first year, by the second year we are beginning to recover some of our money back. We are still running a massive direct mail deficit, but the numbers are starting to go down.
   
   
9. After two years of Special Appeals and two successful renewal cycles, the surviving member/donor to a direct mail organization will become a cash cow in Year Three -- the cash cow that enables the direct mail machine to pump out more direct mail in perpetuity. If everything has gone perfect, our direct mail progam will now have broken even.
   


10. But, you will notice, NOT A DIME has yet gone out to support real program work. What was the initial cause we were raising money for again? Helping dogs and cats? Sorry, that's not yet on the agenda. Not yet. Maybe later. Or maybe never.
    
    
11. Now, if you do a leaf-plot of this, or any other nonprofit direct mail cohort, you will see that the average donor to HSUS is actually costing the organization more than he or she ever donates, and that MORE than 100 percent of the money these folks give (i.e. the majority of all donors to the organization) will see their total donations simply spin down the drain to pay for more direct mail. HSUS is not unique in this regard; this is the way it is with most direct mail "fright factory" organizations asking for "your most generous contribution at this critical time."
    


12. The direct mail industry describes the system I have layed out here as "prospecting" for members and donors. The analogy is to gold: They put 100 tons of earth (i.e., the names and addresses of people they have bought from a direct mail list vendor)into the front of their gold-sluicing machine , and then they do a hard wash of the dirt to float off as much of scum as possible. What starts out as a ton of earth is actually 99.99999 percent dirt and 00.000001 percent gold. After one pass through the gold-washing machine, however, the remainder is reduced to 99 percent dirt and 1 percent gold. With each pass through the wash, the amount of dirt goes down, and the amount of gold goes up. You never get much lower than 80 percent dirt and 20 percent gold, but 20 percent gold is the stuff of direct mail dreams. Twenty percent gold? Imagine!
    
    
13. The level of dirt washing that goes on inside a direct mail operation is astounding. Nonprofit donors are analyzed with machines that would make a Comstock gold assayor green with envy. Today computers keep careful tabs on such things as "recency, frequency and monetary," and each donor's "highest gift to date." This data, in turn, is used to determine how large a gift to ask for in the next letter, and how often to send any particular donor another letter asking for more money. The goal of every direct mail factory is to move the donors up the "giving ladder" by increasing the frequency of the giving and the amount of each donation. The theory is that anyone who gives $50 can give $100, and that anyone who gives $100 can give $500, etc.
    
    
14. And, of course, you can do more than just milk the living. Organizations like HSUS have active bequest and planned giving programs too. Bequests are really fine things. After all, the dead never complain too loudly about what you are doing with their money!
    
    
15. What does a nonprofit direct mail mill do with all of its "mill tailings" -- the folks who joined the organization in Year One, but have never given again despite four Special Appeals and three to six Renewal notices after that? The names and address of these folks are bundled up and sold or traded with other direct mail organizations. This is how your name and address migrates from one direct mail organization to another. If you stop giving to HSUS, your name will simply be sold off to the Sierra Club, or NOW, or Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Organizations like HSUS will even sell their active donor lists for a price -- the price determined by a "recency, frequency, monetary" calculation. A list of donors who only give small amounts infrequently will be cheaper than a list of donors who give a little more money a little less frequently.

TO RECAP: Most of the people who write a check to the HSUS are actually costing the organization more money than they are donating. In this sense, 100 percent of their checks (and then some!) are going down the rat hole of direct mail. The same is true for people who join HSUS, give money to a special appeal, and even renew their membership for a second year of direct mail abuse. The average two-year member/donor to HSUS is still costing the organization more money than it is bringing in by having them on the roles. It is only after someone has been a member of HSUS for MORE than two years that the member moves from being a "direct mail cash calf" that sucks money out of the system into being a direct mail "cash cow" that can be miled for profit.

And to recap, HSUS is not unique in this regard. The same economic engine is at work inside most nonprofit direct mail mills. The distinction of HSUS is not that it is the only nonprofit direct mail mill out there, but that it is one of the largest direct mail mills on earth.

More money is sucked up for less use at HSUS than almost any other organization in America.

Now, to answer a final question: Why do direct mail mills target senior citizens?

Well, for one thing, senior citizens actually sit and read. Younger people tend to listen to I-Pods, watch TV, and run off to the gym to work out before dashing off to the elementary school to pick up their kids.

Also, seniors are less likely to be educated (or, if you prefer, they are less sophisticated)and are more trusting than younger people.

Also, as a population ages, it tends to skew more to women. The older a population is, the more women it will have. While women are not quite as likely to be big donors to an organization as men are, they are more likely to respond to direct mail prospect letters, and they are more likely to be frequent donors as well. Women are also more likely to be influenced by emotion-based direct mail appeals; the kind of appeals that the Animal Right crowd specializes in.

And then, of course, we have seniors who donate to charities because it means at least something can be found in their mail box a couple of times a week. You would be surprised how many lonely old people out there thrill at getting something in the mail that is actually addressed to them. Their own kids never write. At least that nice-looking Mr. Pacelle does.

And so there it is. That's how it works.

If Wayne Pacelle or anyone at HSUS wants to go over specific HSUS numbers with me, I am more than happy to do so, as I work right around the corner from their office in Washington, D.C., and I would be only too happy to drop by to pick up a copy of their accounting ledgers.

In fact, if Mr. Pacelle will give me a copy of their raw direct mail expense and income data (not the processed IRS-990 data, but the real numbers showing the costs of postage, printing, paper, creative consultants, cost of caging operations, etc), I will buy him lunch and we can go over the data and run a cohort analysis to figure out how long it takes for a HSUS member to "go green" and get out of the red.

My only stipulation is that after I run the data, I can publicize it. After all, who knew truth to suffer in a free and open investigation?

If am wrong about the fact that 70-75% of all HSUS direct mail money is going out to pay for more direct mail, I will be more than happy to report my error. After all, as Charles Barkley so famously said, "I could be wrong . . . but I doubt it."

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