Pluck Your Heartstrings

 I watch those commercials for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. I understand that I am being manipulated. Those shivering puppies and big eyed kittens cowering are being presented as evidence of the cruelty of man against nature. All that footage of starving and tormented domesticated wildlife is there to elicit a very specific reaction: open your wallet. 

It seems like a pretty reasonable exchange. Dogs and cats and the occasional horse didn't ask to be brought into a world that would rend and torture them. They had the terrible misfortune of being bred into a space where they would be ignored and forgotten, or worse still become the object of their masters' poor attempts at being human. 

But did you know that your local SPCA is not funded by the ASPCA? The national group is not an umbrella organization for the folks in your neighborhood who are actively out in the streets rescuing animals from the lives into which they have been relegated. Since 2008, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has raised more than two billion dollars. Only seven percent of that found its way to local shelters and rescue operations through grants. Grants that had to be applied for by the local shelters. 

So, where is all that money going if not for doggie beds and kibble? Well, running a great big non-profit like the ASPCA is a very expensive undertaking. The CEO of the ASPCA makes eight hundred fifty thousand dollars a year. They have to pay folks to do jobs like senior director, professional consultant, senior finance analyst, and human resources manager. These jobs don't come cheap. So when they hit the end of that commercial and they're asking you to spend just sixty-three cents a day to help save an animal in trouble, remember that they're also sending you a T-shirt so you can feel good about keeping the lights on at their Manhattan office. 

Or you can be happy to know that part of each donation goes to the production company that gets paid one hundred fifty million dollars to make those ads that got you to open up your wallet in the first place. 

Be kind to animals. Not to non-profit CEOs.