Nonprofit management

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1997:

Investigating business satisfaction with
the outcome of joint projects involving environmental
advocacy groups, the August edition of
The Green Business Letter found the Nature
Conservancy scoring 4.33 on a scale of five; the
World Wildlife Fund 4.07; the National
Wildlife Federation 3.96; the National Audubon
Society 3.90; the Council on Economic
Priorities 3.74; the Environmental Defense
Fund 3.73; the Natural Resources Defense
Council 3.25; the Rainforest Action Network
3.25; the Sierra Club 2.88; and Greenpeace just
1.85.
The Internal Revenue Service has proposed
raising the financial threshhold at which
nonprofit organizations must file IRS Form 990 to
$40,000 in annual receipts. The current threshhold
is $25,000. IRS Form 990, which by law must be
available to the public, is the primary nonprofit
accountability document.

The National Humane Education
Society in July flunked six National Charities
Information Bureau accountability standards,
including the requirements that a charity must
spend at least 60% of revenues on programs and
that fundraising expenses in relation to fundraising
results should be reasonable over time.

International
The Royal SPCA on July 1 predicted a
profit for the first time from “Freedom Foods,” a
three-year-old promotion of “humanely produced”
meat and eggs, underwritten by the investment of
£2.1 million. “These loans had to be written off in
1996 when Freedom Foods became a charitable
company,” wrote Hugh Muir of the London Daily
Telegraph. “There were also claims that the standards
demanded of farmers were too lax to have
any impact on animal welfare.”
The Royal SPCA in August named former
animal researcher Tony Suckling d i r e c t o r –
general. Now critical of animal research, as one
of the three animal welfare representatives on the
British government’s 14-member Animal
Procedures Committee, Suckling experimented for
18 years on mice and baby guinea pigs.
Taiwanese and French media, with
Radio New Zealand, in mid-July blew the whistle
on A d o p t – A – S h e e p, a project of Rural Tours,
directed by one Helen Hicks with the cooperation
of EVA Airlines, eight Taiwanese travel agents,
and the New Zealand Tourist Board. About 150
Taiwanese tourists had paid to “adopt” sheep they
visited on tours, without being told that the “adoption”
did not spare the sheep from slaughter. “It’s
a conceptual adoption,” said Hicks.