College Republicans' Fundraising Criticized (washingtonpost.com): "The College Republican National Committee is under fire for using front organizations to collect millions of dollars in contributions, including money from elderly people with dementia." [--snip--]
Late last month, the College Republican executive board approved a verbal resolution proposed by Hoplin to review and likely cancel the organization's direct-mail contract with Virginia-based Response Dynamics Inc., according to sources who attended.
The College Republicans once were an arm of the Republican National Committee. In anticipation of the 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, it became independent and formed in April of that year what is known as a 527 organization under the tax code. Since then, the College Republicans have raised $14.8 million, largely through the direct-mail program run by Response Dynamics.
But wait, Gentle Reader, there's more:
Offthekuff reports:
Alison Eikele, a spokeswoman for the College Republicans, said 79 percent of the group's revenue has been eaten up by the costs of fundraising consultants. The rest went for a campus recruiting drive that more than tripled membership to 150,000, for grooming new members to be foot soldiers in the Bush-Cheney campaign's get-out-the-vote effort and for dispatching 75 paid staff members to presidential battleground states this fall, Hoplin said.
And just what else is Response Dynamics (beside fleecing alzheimer's victims for College Republicans) doing? How about frightening elderly folks with lies about Social Security?
The fear merchants: Diana Walsh: San Francisco Examiner: 2/8/98
"Seniors are a top target of these folks . . ." said Greg Marchildon, spokesman for the American Association of Retired Persons. "There are seniors who receive volumes of mail that say if you don't give me $25, $50 or $100, the sky is going to fall down. (Many solicitors) are far more interested in scaring these seniors than they are in providing them with the facts. Their common strategy is to use very open-ended and misleading language. . . . What you end up with is frightened and scared older Americans who are giving away their money to organizations that aren't going to provide them with important services or information." [--snip--]
"In recent weeks we have had a growing number of inquiries about groups soliciting on behalf of senior-related issues like Social Security and Medicare," said Bennett Weiner, a vice president at the Council of Better Business Bureaus in Arlington, Va.
Most of the letters ring with hyperbolic, anti-government zealotry. [--snip--]
The National Center for Public Policy Research, likewise in Washington, offers an equally dire situation:
"I only hope that I am not too late. All I have is my faith that you will trust me enough to send your vital $75 today." [--snip--]
Amy Moritz Ridenour, president of the National Center for Public Policy Research, says that emotional pitches get results, and insists that would-be donors don't want the details.
"It's just that you're competing with a lot of other organizations. People seem to respond better to emotion than they do with letters that have lots and lots of facts," said Moritz, who said her letters were written by a direct-mail firm, Response Dynamics, but read by her before they were sent. "You have to give something that is light enough that people will be willing to read it upon receipt. . . . If they don't read it right at that moment, all the studies show they never will."
