Patty Wetterling co-founded the Jacob Wetterling Foundation in 1990, after her 11-year-old son was kidnapped at gunpoint. Jacob has not been found.
"Missing children's organizations spring up out of crisis," she said. "Fundraisers exploit these devastating situations."
But groups shouldn't allow themselves to be overcharged by fundraisers over and over, she said. They "need to learn."
6% for the charity
Vickie Bouska, a retiree in Hiawatha, Iowa, became a donor to Citizens Against Government Waste after she heard leaders' arguments on television and received a fundraising letter. The group addressed her fears about the future.
"I'm scared to death of what we're leaving our children," she said. "The Chinese or the Canadians are going to own us, because no one in Washington can close the pocketbooks."
But she was stunned to learn from a reporter how much money the group ceded to its commercial fundraisers. Of $879,000 raised in the decade examined, $49,000 -- 6% -- reached the charity.
"They aren't really getting the money," Bouska said, "so why am I sending it?"
Thomas Schatz, president of the Washington, D.C.-based group founded by industrialist J. Peter Grace and muckraking journalist Jack Anderson, defended its fundraising.
"The purpose of telemarketing is not always to 'come out ahead,' though that's always the goal, but to reinforce [donors] for the future," he said.
The Los Angeles-based fundraiser Facter Direct, which conducted the group's telemarketing campaigns, declined to comment on its work for Citizens Against Government Waste. On average, state data show, it returns 39% of what it raises to its clients, slightly less than the industry norm.
"The numbers on the surface don't always tell the whole story, said the firm's president, Tom Siegel. "Organizations are not stupid. They recognize the cost of telemarketing and the annoyance of it. But . . . they recognize that it's one of the most effective ways to raise money" over the long run.
Schatz noted that the telemarketing campaigns reported to the state reflect a small portion of his organization's overall fundraising. Direct mail by commercial solicitors -- an approach used by the group for two decades -- provides most of its approximately $5.4 million in annual revenue and is more efficient, he said.
It proved impossible to verify that claim, because only one direct-mail campaign of behalf of Citizens Against Government Waste was registered with the state, as required, in the 10-year period. That one showed no revenue.
