 Show Ed Sheeran artwork raises $70,000 for cancer charity An abstract painting called ‘Splash Planet’ by Ed Sheeran raised $70,000 for a cancer charity in a raffle. The winner is from the U.S. The new episode of your favorite show is on a commercial break when suddenly, a haggard dog appears on screen, staring timidly out of its metal crate. As a slow, melancholy piano riff plays, more sad-eyed pets appear one after another, cowering and whimpering. "Right now, somewhere in America, there's an animal being beaten, and another being locked in a cage, alone, and left to die," the narrator says. The donation hotline for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, an animal welfare nonprofit founded in 1866, appears at the bottom of the screen. "We can't help these animals without your support," viewers are told. It's a familiar scene to any TV viewer. But in recent months, two identical Facebook posts have told thousands of social media users not to believe these advertisements, a trademark of the ASPCA. Shared over 31,000 times in total this year, the posts claim only three cents of each dollar donated are used "for veterinary supplies and for transporting the animals" and that the nonprofit's CEO has a salary of $600,000, with a $100,000 bonus. "Rather than giving them anything, my money would be better used to buy a large bag of dog food and take it to a local animal shelter," the author concludes. USA TODAY reached out to the users who shared the photo for comment. However, the post and its statistics are misleading. The organization's tax filings show it spends far more on charitable programs and animal care than 3%. Shelter and veterinary care accounted for 34.4% of the ASPCA's budget in 2019, and on average, 75.1% of expenses have gone to efforts that support its mission statement in recent years. Fact check: Stores cannot use checkout charity funds to offset their own taxes Stats used in post are outdated, exclude important data pointsBy using data points from two different years that account for less than 4% of the ASPCA's annual spending, these Facebook posts paint a distorted picture of the organization's finances. The ASPCA documents where it spends its revenue – around $279 million in 2019 – in an annual, publicly available tax filing called the Form 990. All tax-exempt organizations must file these forms, which the IRS also makes available to the public. The ASPCA's 990s show it spends far more on direct care to animals than the post would lead one to believe, with over 24 different categories of spending separated into three broad groups – one for funds spent on charitable programs, one for overhead costs and one for fundraising expenses. "The information in this post is grossly inaccurate and extremely misleading" Rebecca Goldrick, spokesperson for the ASPCA, told USA TODAY in an email. "Based on the ASPCA’s latest available financial data, 77 cents of every dollar is spent on the ASPCA’s lifesaving animal-related programs and services around the country." Charity Navigator's analysis of the Form 990 functional expense report from fiscal year 2019 confirms Goldrick's figure. The ASPCA spent 76.9% of its $250 million budget on programs, 19.2% on fundraising and 3.9% on administrative costs that year. Charity Navigator also calculates an average across several years of 990s to rate financial efficiency, and it found 75.1% of the ASPCA's total expenses have gone to its charitable programs in recent years. This earns the organization two out of four stars for financial efficacy, though it is rated three of four stars overall. Posts mislead about ASPCA spending on animal health servicesIn the posts, the CEO’s compensation of $700,000 is contrasted with the three cents per dollar that goes to "veterinary supplies and transporting the animals." That statistic may come from a five-year-old blog article titled "Where does $1 to the ASPCA go?" But cherry-picking those two data points is misleading. The ASPCA's 2014 tax return, which was cited in the blog post, confirms that two categories named “veterinary and medical services” and “transport expenses” together accounted for 3%, or three cents on the dollar, of the ASPCA’s spending that year. But much more than that actually went to animal health care that year. The “Statement of Program Service Accomplishments" in the ASPCA's 990s has a more accurate reflection of the nonprofit's spending on medical care. In those forms, the charity reports "animal health services" accounted for 20.6% of its total expenses in 2014, far more than the post implies. More recent data shows that in 2019, the broader category of "shelter and veterinary services" accounted for 34.4% of its total expenses, or $86 million. According to Goldrick, this category includes costs for the ASPCA's animal hospital, adoption centers and community veterinary centers in New York City, as well as its national Animal Poison Control 24/7 hotline. The ASPCA also gave away $16 million, or 6.3% of total spending, in grants to local animal welfare and anti-cruelty organizations in 2019. Salary of the ASPCA's CEO accounts for 0.3% of spendingThe posts claim that the CEO was paid $700,000, but this figure comes from a different year than the 3% claim. CEO Matthew Bershadker was paid $497,818 in 2014, ProPublica’s data on the ASPCA shows. The $700,000 claim is more in line with the $712,397 salary reported in 2018, or the $762,996 reported in 2019. In either year, the figure is a small portion of the ASPCA budget. Over the last three years, ASPCA has spent an average of 1.4% of its budget on compensation for executives, which includes directors, key employees and the CEO, Goldrick said. Fact check:Chick-fil-A has not resumed donations to groups that oppose LGBTQ rights Our rating: Missing contextWe rate the claim that the ASPCA spends just three cents of each dollar donated on medical supplies and transport MISSING CONTEXT, based on our research. Three percent of the charity's spending went to two similar categories in its 2014 tax return, but reading the titles of those categories literally gives the wrong impression, since far more than that goes to animal welfare in various ways. The most recent data shows that the ASPCA spends 77% of its money on charitable programs that support its mission. And in 2019, 34.4% of the budget went to shelter and veterinary services. Our fact-check sources:
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We’ve all seen those sad commercials on TV asking to help dogs and cats. Won’t you give just $19 a month to help those poor pets? The ads are effective. But where does the money actually go? Much of the time it goes into offshore Caribbean accounts and executives, sadly. Just look at the ASPCA. According to the newly released tax returns, ASPCA CEO Matthew Bershadker received about $770,000 in compensation in 2018. According to a Charity Navigator study, the average nonprofit CEO’s pay is $123,000. This means Bershadker’s pay is more than 6 times the average nonprofit CEO. And it’s on top of Bershadker earning over $800,000 in the previous year. Bershadker isn’t the only cat getting fat at the ASPCA: 158 other employees (more than a tenth of the organization) made six-figure salaries. Of every dollar donated to ASPCA, 38 cents was used to pay salaries and benefits. The ASPCA also spent $89.1 million on fundraising-related expenses to churn out direct mail and other appeals–“factory fundraising,” if you will. What’s more, the ASPCA stuffed more than $21 million in offshore bank accounts, mostly in the Caribbean. Gee, what about those needy animals in ASPCA ads? There is a good reason CharityWatch gives ASPCA a “C” grade–but perhaps it should be an “F.” When it comes to making sure your money goes to animals, the best thing you can do is give to a local animal shelter. Most will not pay bloated salaries or blow through money on fundraising. Plus, you get to see your donation in action in your own community. Visit www.HelpPetShelters.com to see one of our projects supporting the “give local” message. |
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