Checking Up on Charities

Americans last year gave some $22 billion in charity, with 86% of that large sum coming from individual donors. Yet no one really knows where all the money went, and Minnesota's Senator Walter Mondale, chairman of the Subcommittee on Children and Youth, has become increasingly alarmed at the operations of unchecked charities. Mondale is not alone. The national office of the Better Business Bureau received 10,000 inquiries and complaints about charities last year, and this year the volume is rising sharply.

The Mondale subcommittee probe last week of the Epilepsy Foundation of America revealed that straightforward aid to the needy is far from a certainty. Mondale's investigators found that more than half of the $4 million the E.F.A. spent last year went to meet fund-raising and administrative costs. The Senator fears that similar slipshod management may be going on in other children's charities. To correct such abuse, he thinks it may become necessary to require charitable groups to adopt uniform accounting procedures. Other possible strictures: limit the amount they spend on fund-raising promotions and include brief statements of their financial status on all solicitations.

Clearly some form of federal overseeing of charities would benefit not only contributors but also the charities themselves, especially the many effectively performing services. Donors deserve help in distinguishing prudent from slovenly charitable operations. "When you're running up very high costs," says Mondale, "there is a good argument that you are not a charity but a public nuisance."

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