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| The Sacramento Bee(Published April 22, 2001) To our readersToday, on the 31st anniversary of Earth Day, the environmental movement is at a crossroads. No one can deny its many successes in preserving precious natural resources, but they have come with a price. In fact, some say the environmental movement is fighting for its very soul. In this five-part series, Tom Knudson, The Bee's Pulitzer Prize-winning environmental reporter, examines the high-powered fund raising, the litigation and the public relations machine that has come to characterize much of the movement today. His stories are based on exhaustive research conducted over 16 months with travel to 12 states and northern Mexico. And what he has found is that the movement established, in part, to combat the influence of the powerful has itself become big business. Rick Rodriguez
The seriesSunday, April 22:Price of power Monday, April 23: Cause or commerce? When you give $20 to an environmental organization, you expect it to go toward protecting the environment. But creative accounting hides the myriad ways groups can fold a hefty chunk of that donation back into their fund raising and bureaucracy.
Tuesday, April 24: Strongest suit
Wednesday, April 25: Apocalypse now
Thursday, April 26: Hope, not hype
Movement's prosperity comes at a high priceBy Tom Knudson Bee Staff Writer (Published April 22, 2001) As a grass-roots conservationist from Oregon, Jack Shipley looked forward to his visit to Washington, D.C., to promote a community-based forest management plan. But when he stepped into the national headquarters of The Wilderness Society, his excitement turned to unease. "It was like a giant corporation," Shipley said. "Floor after floor after floor, just like Exxon or AT&T." In San Francisco, Sierra Club board member Chad Hanson experienced a similar letdown when he showed up for a soiree at one of the city's finest hotels in 1997. "Here I had just been elected to the largest grass-roots environmental group in the world and I am having martinis in the penthouse of the Westin St. Francis," said Hanson, an environmental activist from Pasadena. "What's wrong with this picture? It was surreal." Soon, Hanson was calling the Sierra Club by a new name: Club Sierra. Extravagance is not a trait normally linked with environmental groups. The movement's tradition leans toward simplicity, economy and living light on the land. But today, as record sums of money flow to environmental causes, prosperity is pushing tradition aside, and the millions of Americans who support environmental groups are footing the bill. High-rise offices, ritzy hotels and martinis are but one sign of wider change. Rising executive salaries and fat Wall Street portfolios are another. So, too, is a costly reliance on fund-raising consultants for financial success. Put the pieces together and you find a movement estranged from its past, one that has come to resemble the corporate world it often seeks to reform. Although environmental organizations have accomplished many stirring and important victories over the years, today groups prosper while the land does not. Competition for money and members is keen. Litigation is a blood sport. Crisis, real or not, is a commodity. And slogans and sound bites masquerade as scientific fact. "National environmental organizations, I fear, have grown away from the grass roots to mirror the foxes they had been chasing," said environmental author Michael Frome, at a wilderness conference in Seattle last year. "They seem to me to have turned tame, corporate and compromising." This series of articles -- based on more than 200 interviews, travel across 12 states and northern Mexico, and thousands of state and federal records -- will explore the poverty of plenty that has come to characterize much of the environmental movement. Some of the highlights:
"A lot of environmental messages are simply not accurate," said Jerry Franklin, a professor of forest ecology and ecosystem science at the University of Washington. "But that's the way we sell messages in this society. We use hype. And we use those pieces of information that sustain our position. I guess all large organizations do that." And sometimes when nature needs help the most, environmental groups are busy with other things. As the tiny Fresno kangaroo rat struggled for survival in the industrialized farmland of California's San Joaquin Valley in the 1990s, for example, the environmental movement did not seem to notice. As a fisheries conservationist tried to save rare trout species across remote parts of Oregon and Nevada, he found no safety net in major environmental groups. As sea turtles washed up dead and dying on Texas beaches in 1993, no groups made the turtles their mascot. "I contacted everybody and nobody listened," said Carole Allen, who rehabilitates turtles injured in fishing nets. "Everybody wants to save dolphins. Turtles aren't popular. It really gets frustrating." Yet look closely at environmentalism today and you also see promise and prosperity coming together to form a new style of environmentalism -- one that is sprouting quietly, community by community, across the United States and is rooted in results, not rhetoric. "I'm so frustrated with the opportunism and impulsiveness of how groups are going about things," said Steve McCormick, president of The Nature Conservancy, which uses science to target and solve environmental problems. "What's the plan? What are the milestones by which we can measure our success?" Today's challenges are more subtle and serious than those of the past. Stopping a dam is child's play compared to halting the spread of destructive, non-native species. Protecting old-growth forests from logging is simple; saving them from fire and disease is more difficult. But as the Bush administration takes control in Washington, many groups are again tuning up sound bites -- not drawing up solutions. "President Bush is forging full steam ahead ... to open up the Arctic!" says John Flicker, president of the National Audubon Society, in one of the first mass-market fund-raising letters focusing on Bush's environmental policies. "I need you to make a Special Emergency Gift." There is no clearinghouse for information about environmental groups, no oversight body watching for abuse and assessing job performance. What information exists is scattered among many sources, including the Internal Revenue Service, philanthropic watchdogs, the U.S. Department of Justice and nonprofit trade associations. Sift through their material and here is what you find: Donations are at flood stage. In 1999, individuals, companies and foundations gave an average of $9.6 million a day to environmental groups, according to the National Center for Charitable Statistics, which monitors nonprofit fund raising. "Our business is booming," said Patrick Noonan, chairman of the Conservation Fund, an Arlington, Va., group that provides financial and educational assistance to environmental organizations. The dollars do not enrich equally. The nation's 20 largest groups -- a tiny slice of the more than 8,000 environmental organizations -- took in 29 percent of contributions in 1999, according to IRS Form 990 tax records. The top 10 earned spots on the Chronicle of Philanthropy's list of America's wealthiest charities. The richest is The Nature Conservancy, an Arlington, Va., group that focuses on purchasing land to protect the diversity of species. In 1999, The Nature Conservancy received $403 million, as much as its six nearest rivals combined: Trust for Public Land, Ducks Unlimited, World Wildlife Fund, Conservation International, National Wildlife Federation and Natural Resources Defense Council. Forty years ago, the environmental movement was a national policy sideshow. Today, it is a strong, vocal lobby that weighs in on everything from highway transportation to global trade. Some groups, such as the National Audubon Society and Environmental Defense, are generalists, dabbling in many things. Others, such as Ducks Unlimited and Conservation International, have found success in specialization. Public support runs deep, too. "Many, many people feel almost religious about the environment," said Patricia Schifferle, former regional director for The Wilderness Society in California. "It really does touch their inner souls." One recent public opinion poll commissioned by The Nature Conservancy found that 54 percent of the nation's 104 million households were "extremely concerned" or "very concerned" about the environment. An additional 31 percent were "somewhat concerned." About three-fourths of all contributions in 1999 came from an estimated 8 million to 17 million Americans. Most personal contributions were modest, but some were not. Vice President Dick Cheney, then-CEO of Halliburton Co., gave $10,000 to the Conservation Fund. Harrison Ford gave $5 million to Conservation International. Julian Robertson Jr., a leading money manager, gave more than $100,000 to Environmental Defense and more than $50,000 to The Nature Conservancy. "This is a growth industry -- a huge growth industry," said Daniel Beard, chief operating officer at the National Audubon Society. "There is a lot of wealth that has accumulated in this country over the last 20 years. And people are wanting to do good things with it." Conservation has not always been so comfortable. Much of its history is rooted in simplicity. Henry David Thoreau, perhaps America's earliest conservationist, set the tone with his 19th-century classic -- "Walden" -- about living in harmony with nature. "Simplicity. Simplicity. Simplicity!" Thoreau wrote. "I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million, count half a dozen and keep your accounts on your thumbnail." John Muir, the California naturalist whose spirited defense of the Sierra Nevada brought conservation to the forefront of the nation's attention a century ago, expanded on Thoreau's theme. Living on bread, oatmeal and water, Muir would disappear into the Sierra for weeks, then return and pour his passion into print. "Climb the mountains and get their good tidings," he wrote. "Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees." David Brower, the legendary former Sierra Club leader who led successful battles to keep dams out of Dinosaur National Monument and the Grand Canyon in the 1950s and '60s, said success springs from deeds, not dollars. "We were getting members because we were doing things," Brower said before he died last year. "Our (strength) came from outings and trips -- getting people out. It came from full-page ads and books." Today, there is a new approach -- junk mail and scare tactics. Dear Friend, If you've visited a national park recently, then some of the things you're about to read may not surprise you! America's National Park System -- the first and finest in the world -- is in real trouble right now. Yellowstone ... Great Smoky Mountains ... Grand Canyon ... . Everglades. Wilderness, wildlife, air and water in all these magnificent parks are being compromised by adjacent mining activities, noise pollution, commercial development and other dangerous threats ... So begins a recent fund-raising letter from the National Parks Conservation Association, a 400,000-plus-member organization. The letter goes on to tell of the group's accomplishments, warn of continued threats, ask for money -- "$15 or more" -- and offer something special for signing up. "Free as our welcome-aboard gift ... The NPCA bean bag bear!" Let's say you did send in $15. What would become of it? According to the group's 1998-99 federal tax form, much of your money would have been routed not to parks but to more fund raising and overhead. Just $7.62 (51 percent) would have been spent on parks, less than the minimum 60 percent recommended by the American Institute of Philanthropy, a nonprofit charity watchdog group. And the parks association is not alone. Five other major groups -- including household names such as Greenpeace and the Sierra Club -- spend so much on fund raising, membership and overhead they don't meet standards set by philanthropic watchdog groups. It's not just the cost of raising money that catches attention these days. It is the nature of the fund-raising pitches themselves. "What works with direct mail? The answer is crisis. Threats and crisis," said Beard, the Audubon Society chief operating officer. "So what you get in your mailbox is a never-ending stream of crisis-related shrill material designed to evoke emotions so you will sit down and write a check. I think it's a slow walk down a dead-end road. You reach the point where people get turned off." Then he hesitated, adding: "But I don't want to say direct mail is bad because, frankly, it works." Even some of those who sign the appeals are uncomfortable with them. "Candidly, I am tired of The Wilderness Society and other organizations -- and we are a culprit here -- constantly preaching gloom and doom," said William Meadows, the society's president, whose signature appears on millions of crisis-related solicitations. "We do have positive things to say." Many environmental groups, The Wilderness Society included, also use a legal accounting loophole to call much of what they spend on fund raising, "public education." In 1999, for instance, The Wilderness Society spent $1.46 million on a major membership campaign consisting of 6.2 million letters. But when it came time to disclose that bill in its annual report, the society shifted 87 percent -- $1.27 million -- to public education. The group also shrank a $94,411 telemarketing bill by deciding that 71 percent was public education. The Wilderness Society's spokesman, Ben Beach, said that kind of accounting is appropriate because fund-raising solicitations are educational. "No one is trying to do anything that isn't right by the rule book here," he said. "A lot of us don't particularly like getting (telemarketing) calls. But that's not to say you don't learn something." Still, the accounting practice is controversial. Nine of the nation's 20 largest groups don't use it. "Playing games with numbers is not worth the effort or questions that would come from it," said Stephen Howell, chief operating officer at The Nature Conservancy. "It should be called what it is," said Noonan, the Conservation Fund leader. "As we become larger and more successful, I worry about the ethics of our movement. We need to think about self-regulation and standards. If not, the ones who make mistakes are going to hurt it for all of us." Dollars can disappear in other ways, of course. Some groups lose money on Wall Street. In 1997, Environmental Defense watched with dismay as a $500,000 "short-selling investment partnership" tumbled to $18,000. Acknowledging it was "a lot of money to lose," the group's deputy director of operations, Edward Bailey, pointed out that Environmental Defense has done well with other investments. "No one is going to be right 100 percent of the time," he said. Comfortable office digs and sumptuous fund-raising banquets are another drain on donor dollars. The Sierra Club spends $59,473 a month for its office lease in San Francisco. In Washington, Greenpeace pays around $45,000 a month. In June 1998, The Nature Conservancy spent more than $1 million on a single fund-raising bash in New York City's Central Park. Carly Simon and Jimmy Buffett played. Masters of ceremonies included Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, Mike Wallace and Leslie Stahl. Variety magazine reported that the 1,100 guests were treated to a martini bar and a rolling cigar station. "The goal was to raise (our) profile among high-dollar donors," Conservancy spokesman Mike Horak said in a statement. And it paid off: $1.8 million was raised. Fund-raising banquets never sat well with Alfred Runte, an environmental historian who served as a board member of the National Parks Conservation Association from 1993 to 1997. "We would always go to a sumptuous hotel or the most expensive lodge -- places most Americans couldn't afford," said Runte, author of "Yosemite, The Embattled Wilderness." "If we have to get big donors by spending money that average, dedicated members think is going to the parks, we've lost," he said. "We're no longer environmentalists. We're party-givers." Salaries gobble up money raised, too. In 1999, top salaries at the 10 largest environmental groups averaged $235,918, according to IRS tax forms. By contrast, the president of Habitat for Humanity, International -- which builds homes for the poor -- earned $62,843. At Mothers Against Drunk Driving, the president made $69,570. Among environmental groups, Ducks Unlimited paid its leader the most: $346,882. "Those salaries are obscene," said Martin Litton, a former Sierra Club board member, who worked tirelessly over a half-century to help bring about the creation of Redwoods National Park in 1968 and Sequoia National Monument last year. Litton did it for free. "There should be sacrifice in serving the environment," he said. One large payment occurred in 1997 when the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA) fired its president, Paul Pritchard, in a dispute over management style and direction. It awarded him $760,335 to settle his contract -- the equivalent of more than 50,000 individual $15 donations. Thomas Kiernan, the group's current president, dismissed the incident as "3-year-old history" and called it "profoundly irrelevant." "NPCA made an offer. We countered. It was just like every other negotiation," said Pritchard, now president of the National Park Trust, another parks-based group in Washington. "I'm proud of what I did at NPCA." Others have a different view. "I told Paul that I thought his salary and benefits had become egregious," said former board member Runte. Speaking of the environmental movement as a whole, Runte said: "The larger problem is the disease of money. In truth, what the environmental community has become is a money machine ... We have come to the point where we keep score by the almighty dollar. And we need to start keeping score by the health of the planet."
1905: National Audubon Society founded. 1914: Passenger pigeon goes extinct. 1946: Nature Conservancy established. 1962: "Silent Spring," by Rachel Carson, published. 1969: Cuyahoga River in Ohio catches fire. April 22, 1970: The first Earth Day. 1971: Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund and Greenpeace formed. 1973: Endangered Species Act passed by Congress. Citizen suit provision gives environmental groups the right to sue to enforce the law. 1976: Greenpeace's harp seal campaign touches heartstrings, opens pocketbooks. 1977: Love Canal toxic dumping incident leads to rising concern about dioxin and other chemicals. 1979: Three Mile Island nuclear accident. 1981-83: Sierra Club uses Interior Secretary James Watt as focus of a highly successful membership and fund-raising campaign. 1985: British scientists in Antarctica discover ozone hole. 1986: Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine. March, 1989: Exxon Valdez oil spill. Eleven million gallons of oil blacken 1,500 miles of Alaska shoreline. 1991: Suit filed against U.S. government involving a rare salamander that brings lawyers for the Sierra Club and other plaintiffs $3.55 million. 1991: Conservation International drops its direct mail fundraising campaign because of financial and environmental concerns. 1992: Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro. 1993: Federal Judges sharply criticize a Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund attorney for "flagrant overbilling" in a Clean Air Act case against the government. 1994: Charitable giving to environmental causes tops $2 billion. 1994: National Commission on Wildfire Disasters warns of escalating catastrophic fire danger in western states. 1995: Piece of ice the size of Rhode Island breaks off the Larsen ice shelf in Antarctica, indicating global warming could be a threat to the planet. 1996: Federal judge in Los Angeles reduces fee award of two environmental lawyers by 63 percent in a case involving the red-legged frog, calling the lawyers' hourly time sheets "overstated." 1996: Arizona rancher Matt Maggofin single-handedly saves rare leopard frog, at a personal cost of more than $8,000. February 1997: A $500,000 Environmental Defense Fund investment plunges to $18,000. March, 1997: National Parks Conservation Association fires its president and awards him $760,335 -- without telling members. May, 1997: Sierra Club hosts cocktail party at Westin St. Francis hotel in San Francisco. 1997: Kyoto protocol signed. Industrial nations agree to cut emissions of greenhouse gases by 5 percent to limit global warming. 1997: Julia "Butterfly" Hill begins two-year "tree sit" in a California redwood to protest logging. 1997-98: A coalition of environmental groups distort facts in an effort to derail the Quincy Library Group's logging and thinning project aimed at reducing fire danger and restoring forest health. 1998-99: The Wilderness Society sends 6.2 million fundraising letters at a cost of $1.46 million but uses a loophole to report $1.27 million of the bill as "public education." 1999: Average top executive salary at nation's 10 largest environmental groups climbs to an all-time high: $235,918 1999: Feed store owner Buddy Thomas forms all-volunteer environmental group to protect rare mussels and fish in the Appalachian Mountains. 1999: An estimated 35,000 protesters take to the streets in Seattle, objecting to the World Trade Organization's stance on health, labor and environmental standards. 2000: National Forest Protection Alliance and other groups take scientific findings out of context in promoting a "no-commercial logging" campaign in Congress. 2000: Most destructive fire season in half a century scars Western states. 2000: The Nature Conservancy mails 35 million fundraising letters: an average of 95,890 letters a day. 2000: Defenders of Wildlife receives a "D" rating from American Institute of Philanthropy for spending too little on conservation and too much on fund raising and management. 2001: National Audubon Society launches fund-raising campaign attacking President Bush's environmental policies. -- Research by Tom Knudson
Mission adrift in a frenzy of fund raisingBy Tom Knudson Bee Staff Writer (Published April 23, 2001) Dear Friend, I need your help to stop an impending slaughter. Otherwise, Yellowstone National Park -- an American wildlife treasure -- could soon become a bloody killing field. And the victims will be hundreds of wolves and defenseless wolf pups! So begins a fund-raising letter from one of America's fastest-growing environmental groups -- Defenders of Wildlife. Using the popular North American gray wolf as the hub of an ambitious campaign, Defenders has assembled a financial track record that would impress Wall Street. In 1999, donations jumped 28 percent to a record $17.5 million. The group's net assets, a measure of financial stability, grew to $14.5 million, another record. And according to its 1999 annual report, Defenders spent donors' money wisely, keeping fund-raising and management costs to a lean 19 percent of expenses. But there is another side to Defenders' dramatic growth. Pick up copies of its federal tax returns and you'll find that its five highest-paid business partners are not firms that specialize in wildlife conservation. They are national direct mail and telemarketing companies -- the same ones that raise money through the mail and over the telephone for nonprofit groups, from Mothers Against Drunk Driving to the U.S. Olympic Committee. You'll also find that in calculating its fund-raising expenses, Defenders borrows a trick from the business world. It dances with digits, finds opportunity in obfuscation. Using an accounting loophole, it classifies millions of dollars spent on direct mail and telemarketing not as fund raising but as public education and environmental activism. Take away that loophole and Defenders' 19 percent fund-raising and management tab leaps above 50 percent, meaning more than half of every dollar donated to save wolf pups helped nourish the organization instead. That was high enough to earn Defenders a "D" rating from the American Institute of Philanthropy, an independent, nonprofit watchdog that scrutinizes nearly 400 charitable groups. Pick up copies of IRS returns for major environmental organizations and you'll see that what is happening at Defenders of Wildlife is not unusual. Eighteen of America's 20 most prosperous environmental organizations, and many smaller ones as well, raise money the same way: by soliciting donations from millions of Americans. But in turning to mass-market fund-raising techniques for financial sustenance, environmental groups have crossed a kind of conservation divide. No allies of industry, they have become industries themselves, dependent on a style of salesmanship that fills mailboxes across America with a never-ending stream of environmentally unfriendly junk mail, reduces the complex world of nature to simplistic slogans, emotional appeals and counterfeit crises, and employs arcane accounting rules to camouflage fund raising as conservation. Just as industries run afoul of regulations, so are environmental groups stumbling over standards. Their problem is not government standards, because fund raising by nonprofits is largely protected by the free speech clause of the First Amendment. Their challenge is meeting the generally accepted voluntary standards of independent charity watchdogs. And there, many fall short. Six national environmental groups spend so much on fund raising and overhead they don't have enough left to meet the minimum benchmark for environmental spending -- 60 percent of annual expenses -- recommended by charity watchdog organizations. Eleven of the nation's 20 largest include fund-raising bills in their tally of money spent protecting the environment, but don't make that clear to members. The flow of environmental fund-raising mail is remarkable. Last year, more than 160 million pitches swirled through the U.S. Postal Service, according to figures provided by major organizations. That's enough envelopes, stationery, decals, bumper stickers, calendars and personal address labels to circle the Earth more than two times. Often, just one or two people in 100 respond. The proliferation of environmental appeals is beginning to boomerang with the public, as well. "The market is over-saturated. There is mail fatigue," said Ellen McPeake, director of finance and development at Greenpeace, known worldwide for its defense of marine mammals. "Some people are so angry they send back the business reply envelope with the direct mail piece in it." Even a single fund-raising drive generates massive waste. In 1999, The Wilderness Society mailed 6.2 million membership solicitations -- an average of 16,986 pieces of mail a day. At just under 0.9 ounce each, the weight for the year came to about 348,000 pounds. Most of the fund-raising letters and envelopes are made from recycled paper. But once delivered, millions are simply thrown away, environmental groups acknowledge. Even when the solicitations make it to a recycling bin, there's a glitch: Personal address labels, bumper stickers and window decals that often accompany them cannot be recycled into paper -- and are carted off to landfills instead. "For an environmental organization, it's so wrong," said McPeake, who is developing alternatives to junk mail at Greenpeace. "It's not exactly environmentally correct." The stuff is hard to ignore. Environmental solicitations -- swept along in colorful envelopes emblazoned with bears, whales and other charismatic creatures -- jump out at you like salmon leaping from a stream. Open that mail and more unsolicited surprises grab your attention. The Center for Marine Conservation lures new members with a dolphin coloring book and a flier for a "free" dolphin umbrella. The National Wildlife Federation takes a more seasonal approach: a "Free Spring Card Collection & Wildflower Seed Mix!" delivered in February, and 10 square feet of wrapping paper with "matching gift tags" delivered just before Christmas. The Sierra Club reaches out at holiday time, too, with a bundle of Christmas cards that you can't actually mail to friends and family, because inside they are marred by sales graffiti: "To order, simply call toll-free ... " Defenders of Wildlife tugs at your heart with "wolf adoption papers." American Rivers dangles something shiny in front of your checkbook: a "free deluxe 35 mm camera" for a modest $12 tax-deductible donation. The letters that come with the mailers are seldom dull. Steeped in outrage, they tell of a planet in perpetual environmental shock, a world victimized by profit-hungry corporations. And they do so not with precise scientific prose but with boastful and often inaccurate sentences that scream and shout:
Fact: No one knows how rapidly species are going extinct. The Alliance's figure is an extreme estimate that counts tropical beetles and other insects -- including ones not yet known to science -- in its definition of wildlife.
Fact: National forest logging has dropped dramatically in recent years. In California, clear-cutting on national forests dipped to 1,395 acres in 1998, down 89 percent from 1990.
Facts: "There was never any pup named Hope," says John Varley, chief of research at Yellowstone National Park. "We don't name wolves. We number them." Since wolves were reintroduced into Yellowstone in 1995, their numbers have increased from 14 to about 160; the program has been so successful that Yellowstone officials now favor removing the animals from the federal endangered species list. Longtime conservationist Peter Brussard has seen enough. "I've stopped contributing to virtually all major environmental groups," said Brussard, former Society for Conservation Biology president and a University of Nevada, Reno, professor. "My frustration is the mailbox," he said. "Virtually every day you come home, there are six more things from environmental groups saying that if you don't send them fifty bucks, the gray whales will disappear or the wolf reintroductions in Yellowstone will fail ...You just get super-saturated. "To me, as a professional biologist, it's not conspicuous what most of these organizations are doing for conservation. I know that some do good, but most leave you with the impression that the only thing they are interested in is raising money for the sake of raising money." Step off the elevator at Defenders of Wildlife's office in Washington, D.C., and you enter a world of wolves: large photographs of wolves on the walls, a wolf logo on glass conference room doors, and inside the office of Charles Orasin, senior vice president for operations, a wolf logo cup and a toy wolf pup. Ask Orasin about the secret of Defenders' success, and he points to a message prominently displayed behind his desk: "It's the Wolf, Stupid." Since Defenders began using the North American timber wolf as the focal point of its fund-raising efforts in the mid-1990s, the organization has not stopped growing. Every year has produced record revenue, more members -- and more emotional, heart-wrenching letters. Dear Friend of Wildlife: It probably took them twelve hours to die. No one found the wolves in the remote, rugged lands of Idaho -- until it was too late. For hours, they writhed in agony. They suffered convulsions, seizures and hallucinations. And then -- they succumbed to cardiac and respiratory failure. "People feel very strongly about these animals," said Orasin, architect of Defenders' growth. "In fact, our supporters view them as they would their children. A huge percentage own pets, and they transfer that emotional concern about their own animals to wild animals. "We're very pleased," he said. "We think we have one of the most successful programs going right now in the country." Defenders, though, is only the most recent environmental group to find fund-raising fortune in the mail. Greenpeace did it two decades ago with a harp seal campaign now regarded as an environmental fund-raising classic. The solicitation featured a photo of a baby seal with a white furry face and dark eyes accompanied by a slogan: "Kiss This Baby Good-bye." Inside, the fund-raising letter included a photo of Norwegian sealers clubbing baby seals to death. People opened their hearts -- and their checkbooks. "You have very little time to grab people's attention," said Jeffrey Gillenkirk, a veteran free-lance direct mail copywriter in San Francisco who has written for several national environmental groups, including Greenpeace. "It's like television: You front-load things into your first three paragraphs, the things that you're going to hook people with. You can call it dramatic. You can call it hyperbolic. But it works." The Sierra Club put another advertising gimmick to work in the early 1980s. It found a high-profile enemy: U.S. Secretary of the Interior James Watt, whose pro-development agenda for public lands enraged many. "When you direct-mailed into that environment, it was like highway robbery," said Bruce Hamilton, the club's conservation director. "You couldn't process the memberships fast enough. We basically added 100,000 members." But environmental fund raising has its downsides. It tends to be addictive. The reason is simple: Many people who join environmental groups through the mail lose interest and don't renew -- and must be replaced, year after year. "Constant membership recruitment is essential just to stay even, never mind get bigger," wrote Christopher Bosso, a political scientist at Northeastern University in Boston, in his paper: "The Color of Money: Environmental Groups and the Pathologies of Fund Raising." "Dropout rates are high because most members are but passive check writers, with the low cost of participating translating into an equally low sense of commitment," Bosso states. "Holding on to such members almost requires that groups maintain a constant sense of crisis. It does not take a cynic to suggest ... that direct mailers shop for the next eco-crisis to keep the money coming in." That is precisely how Gillenkirk, the copywriter, said the system works. As environmental direct mail took hold in the 1980s, "We discovered you could create programs by creating them in the mail," he said. "Somebody would put up $25,000 or $30,000, and you would see whether sea otters would sell. You would see whether rain forests would sell. You would try marshlands, wetlands, all kinds of stuff. And if you got a response that would allow you to continue -- a 1 or 2 percent response -- you could create a new program." Today, the trial-and-error process continues. The Sierra Club, which scrambles to replace about 150,000 nonrenewing members a year out of 600,000, produces new fund-raising packages more frequently than General Motors produces new car models. "We are constantly turning around and trying new themes," said Hamilton. "We say, 'OK, well, people like cuddly little animals, they like sequoias.' We try different premiums, where people can get the backpack versus the tote bag versus the calendar. We tried to raise money around the California desert -- and found direct mail deserts don't work." And though many are critical of such a crisis-of-the-month approach, Hamilton defended it -- sort of. "I'm somewhat offended by it myself, both intellectually and from an environmental standpoint," he said. "And yet ... it is what works. It is what builds the Sierra Club. Unfortunately the fate of the Earth depends on whether people open that envelope and send in that check." The vast majority of people don't. Internal Sierra Club documents show that as few as one out of every 100 membership solicitations results in a new member. The average contribution is $18. "The problem is there is a part of the giving public -- about a third we think -- who as a matter of personal choice gives to a new organization every year," said Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope. "We don't do this because we want to. We do it because the public behaves this way." Fund-raising consultants "have us all hooked, and none of us can kick the habit," said Dave Foreman, a former Sierra Club board member. "Any group that gives up the direct mail treadmill is going to lose. I'm concerned about how it's done. It's a little shabby." Another problem is more basic: accuracy. Much of what environmental groups say in fund-raising letters is exaggerated. And sometimes it is wrong. Consider a recent mailer from the Natural Resources Defense Council, which calls itself "America's hardest-hitting environmental group." The letter, decrying a proposed solar salt evaporation plant at a remote Baja California lagoon where gray whales give birth, makes this statement: "Giant diesel engines will pump six thousand gallons of water out of the lagoon EVERY SECOND, risking changes to the precious salinity that is so vital to newborn whales." Clinton Winant, a professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography who helped prepare an environmental assessment of the project, said the statement is false. "There is not a single iota of scientific evidence that suggests pumping would have any effect on gray whales or their babies," he said. The mailer also says: "A mile-long concrete pier will cut directly across the path of migrating whales -- potentially impeding their progress." Scripps professor Paul Dayton, one of the nation's most prominent marine ecologists, said that statement is wrong, too. "I've dedicated my career to understanding nature, which is becoming more threatened," he said. "And I've been confronted with the dreadful dishonesty of the Rush Limbaugh crowd. It really hurts to have my side -- the environmental side -- become just as dishonest." Former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo halted the project last year. But as he did, he also criticized environmental groups. "With false arguments and distorted information, they have damaged the legitimate cause of genuine ecologists," Zedillo said at a Mexico City news conference. A senior Defense Council attorney in Los Angeles, Joel Reynolds, said his organization does not distort the truth. "We're effective because people believe in us," Reynolds said. "We're not about to sacrifice the credibility we've gained through direct mail which is intentionally inaccurate." Reynolds said NRDC's position on the salt plant was influenced by a 1995 memo by Bruce Mate, a world-renowned whale specialist. Mate said, though, that his memo was a first draft, not grounded in scientific fact. "This is a bit of an embarrassment," he said. "This was really one of the first bits of information about the project. It was not meant for public consumption. I was just kind of throwing stuff out there. It's out-of-date, terribly out-of-date." There is plenty of chest-thumping pride in direct mail, too -- some of it false pride. Consider this from a National Wildlife Federation letter: "We are constantly working in every part of the country to save those species and special places that are in all of our minds." Yet in many places, the federation is seldom, if ever, seen. "In 15-plus years in conservation, in Northern California, Nevada, Idaho, Oregon and Washington, I have never met a (federation) person," said David Nolte, who recently resigned as a grass-roots organizer with the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Alliance -- a coalition of hunters and fishermen. "This is not about conservation," he said. "It's marketing." Overstating achievements is chronic, according to Alfred Runte, an environmental historian and a board member of the National Parks Conservation Association from 1993 to 1997. "Environmental groups all do this," he said. "They take credit for things that are generated by many, many people. What is a community accomplishment becomes an individual accomplishment -- for the purposes of raising money." As a board member, Runte finds something else distasteful about fund raising: its cost. "Oftentimes, we said very cynically that for every dollar you put into fund raising, you only got back a dollar," he recalled. "Unless you hit a big donor, the bureaucracy was spending as much to generate money as it was getting back." Some groups are far more efficient than others. The Nature Conservancy, for example, spends just 10 percent of donor contributions on fund raising, while the Sierra Club spends 42 percent, according to the American Institute of Philanthropy. Pope, the Sierra Club director, said it's not a fair comparison. The reason? Donations to the Conservancy and most other environmental groups are tax-deductible -- an important incentive for charitable giving. Contributions to the Sierra Club are not, because it is a political organization, too. "We're not all charities in the same sense," Pope said. "Our average contribution is much, much smaller." Determining how much environmental groups spend on fund raising is only slightly less complex than counting votes in Florida. The difficulty is a bookkeeping quagmire called "joint cost accounting." At its simplest, joint cost accounting allows nonprofit groups to splinter fund-raising expenditures into categories that sound more pleasant to a donor's ear -- public education and environmental action -- shaving millions off what they report as fund raising. Some groups use joint cost accounting. Others don't. Some groups put it to work liberally, others cautiously. Those who do apply it don't explain it. What one group labels education, another calls fund raising. "You use the term joint allocation and most people's eyes glaze over," said Greenpeace's McPeake. The most sophisticated donor in the world "would not be able to penetrate this," she said. Joint cost accounting need not be boring, however. Look closely and you'll find sweepstakes solicitations, personal return address labels, free tote bag offers and other fund-raising novelties cross-dressing as conservation. You also find that those who monitor such activity are uneasy with it. David Ormsteadt, an assistant attorney general in Connecticut, states in Advancing Philanthropy, a journal of the National Society of Fundraising Executives: "Instead of reporting fees and expenses as fund-raising costs, which could ... discourage donations, charities may report these costs as having provided a public benefit. The more mailings made -- and the more expense incurred -- the more the 'benefit' to society." The Wilderness Society, for example, determined in 1999 that 87 percent of the $1.5 million it spent mailing 6.2 million membership solicitation letters wasn't fund raising but "public education." That shaved $1.3 million off its fund-raising tab. One of America's oldest and most venerable environmental groups, the Wilderness Society didn't just grab its 87 percent figure out of the air. It literally counted the number of lines in its letter and determined that 87 of every 100 were educational. When you read in the society's letter that "Our staff is a tireless watchdog," that is education. So is the obvious fact that national forests "contain some of the most striking natural beauty on Earth." Even a legal boast -- "If necessary, we will sue to enforce the law" -- is education. "We're just living within the rules. We're not trying to pull one over on anybody," said Wilderness Society spokesman Ben Beach. Daniel Borochoff, president of the American Institute of Philanthropy, the charity watchdog, said it is acceptable to call 30 percent or less of fund-raising expenses "education." But he deemed that the percentages claimed by the Wilderness Society, Defenders of Wildlife and others were unacceptable. "These groups should not be allowed to get away with this," Borochoff said. "They are trying to make themselves look as good as they can without out-and-out lying ... . This doesn't help donors. It helps the organization." At Defenders of Wildlife, Orasin flatly disagreed. The American Institute of Philanthropy "is a peripheral group and we don't agree with their standards," he said. "We don't think they understand how a nonprofit can operate, much less grow." Even the more mainstream National Charities Information Bureau, which recently merged with the Better Business Bureau's Philanthropic Advisory Service, rates Defenders' fund raising excessive. "We strongly disagree with (the National Charities Information Bureau)," said Orasin. "They take a very subjective view of what fund raising is. We are educating the public. If you look at the letters that go out from us, they are chock-full of factual information." But much of what Defenders labels education in its fund raising is not all that educational. Here are a few examples -- provided to The Bee by Defenders from its recent "Tragedy in Yellowstone" membership solicitation letter:
"That is basically pure fund raising," said Richard Larkin, a certified public accountant with the Lang Group in Bethesda, Md., who helped draft the standards for joint cost accounting. "That group is playing a little loose with the rules." Defenders also shifts the cost of printing and mailing millions of personalized return address labels into a special "environmental activation" budget category. Larkin takes a dim view. "I've heard people try to make the case that by putting out these labels you are somehow educating the public about the importance of the environment," he said. "I would consider it virtually abusive." Not all environmental groups use joint cost accounting. At the Nature Conservancy, every dollar spent on direct mail and telemarketing is counted as fund raising. The same is true at the Sierra Club. "We want to be transparent with our members," said Pope, the club's director. Groups that do use it, though, often do so differently. The National Parks Conservation Association, for example, counts this line as fund raising: "We helped establish Everglades National Park in the 1940s." Defenders counts this one as education: "Since 1947, Defenders of Wildlife has worked to protect wolves, bears ... and pristine habitat." "It's a very subjective world," said Monique Valentine, vice president for finance and administration at the national parks association. "It would be much better if we would all work off the same sheet of music." At the Washington, D.C.-based National Park Trust, which focuses on expanding the park system, even a sweepstakes solicitation passes for education, helping shrink fund-raising costs to 21 percent of expenses, according to its 1999 annual report. Actual fund-raising costs range as high as 74 percent, according to the American Institute of Philanthropy, which gave the Trust an "F" in its "Charity Rating Guide & Watchdog Report." Borochoff, the Institute's president, called the Trust's reporting "outrageous." "Dear Friend," says one sweepstakes solicitation, "The $1,000,000 SUPER PRIZE winning number has already been pre-selected by computer and will absolutely be awarded. It would be a very, very BIG MISTAKE to forfeit ONE MILLION DOLLARS to someone else." Paul Pritchard, the Trust's president, said the group's financial reporting meets non-profit standards. He defended sweepstakes fund raising. "I personally find it a way of expressing freedom of speech," Pritchard said. "I can ethically justify it. How else are you going to get your message out?"
How to be greenEnvironmental movement is at crossroads(Published April 23, 2001) For activists passionate about the environment, these are target-rich times. Dozens of species are under consideration for federal protection. The future of Alaska's untouched arctic north is in play. So are new protections for the roadless forests of Montana and the heavily traveled Sierra. The nuclear power industry, energized by the electricity crisis, is seeking to make a comeback. And President Bush is in the White House, offering environmentalist fund-raisers their reddest meat since James Watt was interior secretary for President Reagan. The challenge for the environmental movement isn't in selecting which target to aim for, but to effect real change that improves the health of the planet. The problems and the politics have become more complex. So must the environmental movement. As Bee investigative reporter Tom Knudson begins to detail today in a five-part series, much has changed since the extractionist philosophies of Reagan and Watt energized environmental groups two decades ago. In the intervening 20 years, the ledgers of environmental groups have become considerably greener, with $3.5 billion in contributions in 1999, up 94 percent from 1992. The groups have become more litigious, accounting for most of the 434 environmental cases against federal agencies during the 1990s, which generated $31.6 million in attorneys' fees. And the movement has steadily evolved, with organizations carving out their own niches and causes. Some are nearly exclusively built to challenge compliance with the Endangered Species Act. Others employ biologists exploring the needs of plants and animals. Others specialize in habitat purchases, requiring a stable of real estate experts and negotiators to put together deals with private landowners and to secure funds from foundations. Yet when it comes to engaging the political system on complex questions of resource policy, the movement struggles to elevate its game to match real world environmental issues. As Knudson points out, environmental politics is no longer a comparatively simple matter of fighting the construction of some on-stream dam. A case in point is the politics surrounding the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, and how to devise new ways to both stabilize its salmon species and assure necessary water supplies for homes and farms. Lasting solutions will demand a new culture of compromise. For environmentalists, it may mean endorsing a new off-stream water storage project in return for, say, new levee setbacks that provide valuable habitat for fish, and new assurances that more water storage doesn't translate into less flows for the fish. Yet there seems a reluctance for any given group on any given issue to break from the herd. Maybe it's a culture within the movement that values solidarity over diversity. Or maybe the room for compromise has been constricted by how the groups have fanned the flames of their fund-raising base by depicting their foes as enemies to be defeated, not interests to be engaged. Regardless, there should be plenty of room for maneuvering inside the nation's big green tent. In the end, the game isn't won in terms of revenues or headlines, but sustainable systems of habitat for both humans and nature.
Salaries of selected leaders of national environmental groups for fiscal year 1998-99, the most recent period for which comparable figuresare available.
IRS Form 990 tax returns, Chronicle of Philanthropy Last Updated on 5/2/01 By usconservation.org
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