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Pennsylvania House of Representatives
07/01/2024 06:15 AM
Pennsylvania House of Representatives
https://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/Legis/CSM/showMemoPublic.cfm?SPick=20190&chamber=H&cosponId=28482
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House of Representatives
Session of 2019 - 2020 Regular Session

MEMORANDUM

Posted: February 22, 2019 11:26 AM
From: Representative Anthony M. DeLuca
To: All House members
Subject: Requiring Charitable Solicitors to Disclose How Much Collected Goes to Actual Cause
 
Charitable giving exceeded $400 billion dollars for the first time in 2017. We are a generous people, and charities play an indispensable part in providing aid to people across the state and country.

Unfortunately, there are groups soliciting that are charitable in name only. The donations they receive are diverted to the pockets of professional solicitors and not to the cause they claim to represent. The end result is people unwittingly donating millions to these professional salespeople. This is wrong and we should take steps to prevent it.

The Tampa Bay Times recently published statistics on the ten worst “charities” and the findings are startling. For example:
  • The Cancer Fund of America paid $75 million of the $87 million it collected to solicitors and spent only 1% on cancer relief.
  • The Breast Cancer Relief Foundation collected $64 million dollars, gave $45 million to solicitors and spent only 2.2% on helping breast cancer victims.
  • The Kid’s Wish Network collected almost $138 million and paid solicitors $116 million of it, in the end spending only 2.5% on their actual mission.
It is easy to be duped by one of these bad charities. The bogus charity often makes its name sound like another well-known and respected charity. And while there are good sources of information and ratings, most people don’t know how to find them, or don’t have time to do research.

To counteract this abuse, we can require the caller to disclose how much of the money they collect goes to their actual cause. By amending the Solicitation of Funds for Charitable Purposes Act we can simply add this to a list of existing disclosure requirements.

Legitimate charities will be comfortable relaying this number while the sham charities will not. In the end our constituents will be protected and feel more confident when they give.

We owe it to Pennsylvanians to arm them with this information before they commit their hard earned money to a charity that exists only for profit. Please join me in this effort. Thanks.


Introduced as HB769