Merritt Clifton on Animal Charity Evaluators
For nearly 45 years I have done accountability reporting and donor education about nonprofit organizations. For more than 30 years I have done accountability reporting specifically focused on animal charities, including 25 years as editor of a series of annual reports initially titled “Who gets the money?”
The first edition covered two dozen major animal charities. Within five years it covered about 100. Retitled "The Watchdog Report on Animal Charities" in 1999, the report expanded up to the production of 15 editions of a handbook which reviewed the budgets, assets, spending patterns, programs, policies, leadership transitions, and any other controversial issues associated with more than 170 animal charities.
Producing such a comprehensive volume annually eventually became economically unviable, even with my wife Beth having done much of the preliminary research to produce an electronic edition that we could not complete.
Bluntly put, insufficient numbers of animal charity donors seemed to give enough of a damn where they throw their money to spend $25 a year making sure it really goes where their donations are most likely to achieve whatever it is they want most to accomplish.
