Fund Raising Fraud Takes Off

 

Honest Fund Raisers

By James Patton

Non-secular, charitable fund-raising in the US prior to World War I consisted largely of pennies put in cups or cans. Beginning with the massive effort led by Herbert Hoover’s Commission for Relief in Belgium, the nation was introduced to large-scale secular charity.

Closely following Hoover was the founding of the American Field Service (AFS), which was created in 1915 to staff and provide ambulances to the French Army. It was funded by generous public and business donations and grew to be quite a large operation. After the war, rather than disband, the leadership decided to repurpose the AFS, and today it describes itself as "a global exchange, volunteer, and intercultural learning organization."

But there were others.

That Were Not So Honest

A  2020 Saturday Evening Post article discusses what grew out of the sheer scale of the wartime funding efforts:

Raising money for a cause—or, pejoratively, systematic begging—was a new sector in the economy of sentiment, and it was big business.

Whether ineffectual charities were nefarious scams or just mismanaged, they were making a whole lot more money after the armistice. The drives that raised funds for the war effort and foreign relief during the war had inadvertently created an army of consultants ready to offer their services to every church, league, and club in the country. Raising money for a cause—or, pejoratively, systematic begging—was a new sector in the economy of sentiment, and it was big business.’

One of the first of these groups, The National Disabled Soldiers League (NDSL), was organized with the supposed purpose of raising funds to help disabled veterans. There was a real need for such assistance. However, the NDSL wasn’t the answer.

The NDSL was a perfect example of the kind of organization that soft-hearted Americans were warned against in the years after the First World War. A 1922 article in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle told of “the suavely professional solicitor of tear-stained checks for shady causes” and advised readers to “ask before you give.”

Fraudulent Fund Raising Became an Industry

 You can read the entire article by clicking HERE.