Thanks to our own Sallie Miller for forwarding this blog from Meating Place (an industry website) written by Emily Meredith. Seems HSUS has found another source of income. Meatingplace blog by Emily Meredith: A few weeks ago, I received an email from a service I routinely use: SurveyMonkey, which enables users to create their own Web-based surveys. SurveyMonkey has program called “SurveyMonkey Contribute,” which, according to their website, is a partnership with “a diverse and respected group of charitable organizations” that generates donations for said organizations by having users take surveys. Unfortunately, the email I received several weeks ago was one that announced the funds raised through this program went, in large part, to none other than the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) Ignoring the fact that I take issue with SurveyMonkey characterizing HSUS as “respected,” HSUS’ donations dwarfed any other charitable organization that SurveyMonkey is currently partnered with: $399,538.00, or 26 percent of all donations. Holy cats and dogs, that’s a lot of surveys! Even among animal-related charities, HSUS far outpaces the competition. Of the money raised for animal related charities, HSUS receives 76%, Wildlife Conservation Society 11%, Pet Finder Foundation 9% and RedRover 4%. Not surprisingly, my inbox started to fill up with forwards of SurveyMonkey’s announcement; so did the Alliance’s Facebook and Twitter (to all my readers, thanks for the tips!). My first reaction was, “oh great, another service I can’t use,” and, full disclosure, I happen to love SurveyMonkey—it’s free and for a non-profit like the Alliance, free is always best. Several of our members wrote to SurveyMonkey expressing their distaste with the large contribution made to HSUS and received identical responses; the gist being: “SurveyMonkey works with the various charity organizations [over 40 in total] to establish legal and marketing relationships, and donations are made on behalf of consumers. When consumers sign up for SurveyMonkey Contribute, they are allowed to select which charity they would like donations to be directed to. They may change their charity selection at any time.” Additionally, SurveyMonkey wrote: “Since issues between our customers and our charitable partners have not been a business issue in the past, we do not plan to make any major changes to our program at this time.” Wanting to give SurveyMonkey the benefit of the doubt, I decided to do a little digging, thinking: it’s not necessarily SurveyMonkey’s fault that HSUS got the most donations—HSUS just had the foresight and staff resources to investigate donation opportunities like this one and promote them to its membership. As a non-profit that could also use charitable donations (hint, hint), I decided to sign the Alliance up to become one of SurveyMonkey’s charitable partners. It seemed like a win-win: there’s no other agriculture organization currently enrolled in the program and many of our members and other industry allies (including Meatingplace!) routinely use SurveyMonkey. Unfortunately, when I filled in the online form, I was informed that the Alliance had already applied, likely some time ago. I promptly emailed the customer service department. I received a response indicating that SurveyMonkey hasn’t “decided which non-profits to allow onboard next,” and if we’re selected, we’ll get an email. I would venture to guess it’s not looking good for us considering how long we’ve been waiting, but I guess you never know. SurveyMonkey, I wanted to defend you. I wanted to come to your rescue. I wanted to turn this train around. Personally, I struggle with “boycotting” or lambasting a given organization on social media just because they donate to HSUS. I struggle because (1) I don’t know what that solves; and (2) sometimes it makes us—meaning agriculture—look like a bully. But my problem, SurveyMonkey, is that you explained to those complaining about your significant HSUS donation that your hands were tied and that your “consumers” chose which charities to donate to. In fact, SurveyMonkey, you pick and choose which charities you want to align yourself with. So really, your consumers can only choose from the charities you hand select—not from any charity that applies to be one of your partners. You can’t have it both ways: either let every charity become a partner and leave it up to your consumers to decide where their money goes, or admit that you’re picking and choosing whom to partner with and own it. But don’t give HSUS nearly $400,000 dollars and pretend you had nothing whatsoever to do with it. That’s what we call misinforming people, and trust me, HSUS knows plenty about that.
Posted on: Wed, 18 Sep 2013 21:24:29 +0000
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