Steve Koval at the Washington Blade has an insightful article on the "inflated" numbers the HRC's been claiming for it's membership. To count anyone who gave money or bought something at the gift-shop or web-store as a perpetual member is totally bogus and misleading. Joe Solmonese needs to clean house and come-clean with the real number of "paid" members of HRC for 2005.
As I said last Fall...frequently...the numbers the HRC released as part of their financial disclosure never jived with their membership-claims. I'll bet that less than 50,000 HRC "members" have actually paid their $35-minimum dues contribution for 2004-2005.
Update:
The HRC website Mission Statement claims of representing "...almost 600,000"? What is the real number? Surely they know how many members they have....
Their 2002 Annual Report page-18, the most-recent year they have posted) shows $7-million in Member contributions; at $35 a head, that's only 200,000-members. And it's unrealistic to assume that no-one contributed more, so the real number of "contributors" must be lower. Even at an average of $50 a head, that's only-140,000. Certainly many HRC members are "Partners" at $120-minimum-a-year each, and there are many Federal Club members who contribute well-over $1200-minimum a year to HRC in-order to get invited to the best parties. That further reduces the number of active dues-contributing members significantly. So what the real number, Joe?
This is the same report where they report that out of $17,399,678 in expenditures, only 24.6%($4,274,468) went to Federal and Field Advocacy; while 42.4% went to Management, General and Fundraising. ($7,379,845 aggr.) The Fundraising line-item ($4,580,243) alone is actually more than Federal and Field Advocacy's.
Would you give to a charity that comsumed 42.4% of it's budget internally?
