Fact Sheet

Public Opinion and Donor Intent:

According to a November 2005 nationwide survey by Zogby International, a leading public opinion research firm (commissioned, for the record, by the Robertson family), a near-unanimous 97 percent of the 1,216 voting-age adults surveyed by the firm said they consider it a “very” or “somewhat” serious matter if charities are spending money donated to them on unauthorized projects, while 78.7 percent said they would “definitely” or “probably” stop supporting charities that accept contributions for one purpose and use them for another.

A near equal number of respondents (72.4 percent) said that when a nonprofit organization uses money “for a purpose other than the one for which it was given,” the managers of the recipient organization “should be held legally or criminally liable for acting in a fraudulent manner.”