Opinion

To help our furry friends, don’t give nationally

With 70 million households in America owning pets, it’s no surprise that the TV ads with sad music showing needy cats and dogs tug at our heartstrings.

Americans give hundreds of millions a year to national animal charities. Sadly, a good chunk of that money isn’t going to help those animals. It’s going to pay a racketeering lawsuit settlement.

Last month, several animal-rights groups including the Humane Society of the United States agreed to pay $16 million to settle a suit over their alleged behavior in a different lawsuit.

The payout settles claims that they’d engaged in illegal payments to a witness as well as bribery, fraud, obstruction of justice and other wrongdoings. That’s on top of $9.3 million the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals paid in 2012 to settle.

The conduct at issue is far from cuddly. Animal-rights activists sued a circus company over a decade ago, claiming elephant abuse. That suit was thrown out after years of litigation, with the court calling it “frivolous” and “vexatious.”

In its dismissal, the court pointed to a scheme by which the activists had paid the key witness in the case nearly $200,000. That witness had also lied to the court, and so naturally the court found him to be discredited and essentially a “paid plaintiff.” The animal-rights law firm representing plaintiffs was even sanctioned by the court.

You wouldn’t know any of this is going on from those ads with sad dogs and cats.

In fact, a lot goes on behind the scenes at national animal groups. Not all of it is bad. But many of these groups have troubling priorities.

As a 30-year veteran of the animal-welfare community, I know there’s a difference between local and national groups that the public does not understand.

One reason is the similarity in names. The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, or ASPCA, is separate from local SPCAs.

The Humane Society of the United States, or HSUS, isn’t affiliated with local humane societies, and only 1 percent of the money it raises goes to local pet shelters.

I used to work as director of education for the Humane Society of the United States.

Everything always seemed to revolve around constant fund-raising, with publicity second and lobbying also important. Direct care of animals was far from the main priority.

Unsurprisingly, then, the overhead of national animal groups can be quite high.

The independent charity evaluator CharityWatch finds that the ASPCA spends up to 35 percent of its budget on overhead. HSUS is worse, spending up to 45 percent of its budget on overhead. That adds up to tens of millions in fund-raising expenses.

Essentially, lots of money is spent on fund-raising in the name of some crisis. Then much of that money gets pumped right back into more fund-raising on the next crisis.

The big winners are the firms that send out the mail and make the commercials. The animals? Not so much.

In contrast, I have worked for local animal control and with local humane societies for most of my life. These groups need money, but they just aren’t as good at marketing themselves as a large national group with mega-sized direct-mail and TV campaigns.

These local organizations are too busy providing hands-on care for animals in their communities.

National awareness or lobbying campaigns can serve a purpose. But donors need to know where their money is going.

National groups wouldn’t raise as much money if their ads didn’t show dogs and cats, but instead the highly paid executives, lawyers and lobbyists who get so much of the cash.

The tear-jerking ads from national groups should come with a warning: If you want to help pet shelters, give to your local ones directly.

That’s a disclaimer these ads will never voluntarily include, but it is a message that any animal lover can spread to others.

Diana Culp is the managing director of the Humane Society for Shelter Pets, a nonprofit dedicated to creating a sustainable base of local support for the nation’s network of local pet shelters.