Portion of telemarketing proceeds retained by charities in CA and NY during 2012

What portion of telemarketing campaigns makes its way to charities for whom the campaigns were conducted?

Here’s the 2012 results based on two recent articles:

• New York – charities retained about 38%
• California – charities retained about 37%

The articles:

For New York state: 2/21 – New York Attorney General – Pennies for Charity / Where Your Money Goes / Telemarketing by Professional Fundraisers – State AG publishes an annual report summarizing how much money telemarketer raise for charities, how much they retain for their costs, and how much is retained by charities. In 2012, there were 589 campaigns which raised $249M. Of this $154.8M was retained by the telemarketers to cover their costs, which is 62.1% of the total.  Charities retained $94.5M, or 37.9% of the total.

Of interest is the extremes of the distribution chart on page 3:

• Charities retained 80% or more of the funds raised in 1.7% of the total number of campaigns
• They retained between 0% and 9% of the campaign proceeds in 8.1% of campaigns
• The charities realized a loss in 15.4% of 589 campaigns

Report has a list of each campaign, giving the charity, the fundraiser, and campaign results.

For California:  1-31 – Orange County Register – Commercial fundraisers swallow millions meant for charity– California AG reports fundraisers collected about $300M in aggregate on behalf of charities in the state during 2012. Amount forwarded to the charities was about $108M, per the article. That means costs to collect were about $198M in aggregate, or about 63% of the funds raised. Charities retained about 37% of campaign proceeds.