2007.11.05
Are you helping as much as you think?
It's June 2004, your phone rings, and it's someone soliciting donations on behalf of the Virginia Police Chiefs Foundation. It's a reputable group that supports law enforcement and the community across the state with education, training and scholarships. You want to help, so you send in a check.
That particular campaign, which ran for a year, raised $1,106,907, according to data from the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. But $981,907 of it -- about 89 percent -- never made it beyond the company whose workers made that phone call to you. That's right, 11 percent of your large-hearted effort to help actually went to the people you intended it for.
The situation is common. Research by Roanoke Times reporter Amanda Codispoti found that from 2004 through 2006, professional solicitors raised about $23 million on behalf of Virginia-based public safety charities like the Fraternal Order of Police and local volunteer fire departments. The solicitors kept $17 million of it.
See for yourself what happened in the campaign you contributed to in the database behind Amanda's story.
Of course, this is business. The solicitors aren't charities themselves. And as Amanda's story points out, the solicitors do have overhead. Fundraising isn't cheap, they say. If it was, the organizations would just do it themselves
But did you know it worked this way? And how does that leave you feeling?
