Posted March 5, 2013
From now until mid-April, five Des Moines Area Regional Transit Authority (DART) buses will be carrying a tail advertisement that highlights the deceptive fundraising practices of the Humane Society of the United States.
HumaneWatch.org, a project of the nonprofit Center for Consumer Freedom in Washington, D.C., has placed the bus ads to educate residents on the very small portion of HSUS’s donations that actually goes to help local hands-on pet shelters.
The ads read: “Caution: The Humane Society of the United States gives only one penny out of every dollar you donate to pet shelters.” Despite 85 percent of the animals in HSUS’s fundraising commercials being dogs and cats, the animal liberation group gives just one percent of the money it raises from the public to local pet shelters or rescues.
“HSUS is a radical PETA-like animal liberation group that uses heart-wrenching images of dogs and cats to guilt Iowans into donating. But it’s only sharing just one penny of every dollar it raises with the hands-on shelters that actually care for these animals,” said J. Justin Wilson, CCF’s senior research analyst. “HSUS’s millions instead go to support a huge staff of lawyers and lobbyists, fundraising expenses, executive pensions and bankroll a fringe agenda that works to spread disinformation about how farmers in Iowa and across the country care for their animals.”
HSUS shared less than one percent of its $127 million budget with pet sheltering organizations in 2011. In the same year, HSUS spent nearly $50 million on fundraising-related expenses, which is 100 times more than it did on grants to support shelter aid. HSUS also socked $2.4 million away into its pension plan.
“If residents of Des Moines want their contributions to aid cats and dogs in their community they should give directly to local pet shelters instead of inadvertently bankrolling HSUS’s twisted PETA-style agenda,” Wilson concluded.
HSUS spent nearly $15,000 to wrap an entire DART bus with an anti-livestock production message in December. The ad will appear on the bus until June.
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