Editor’s note: Since this article was published, The Chronicle has received additional information from Alley Cat Allies and updated the article on November 29 to reflect those details.
Becky Robinson is the founder and president of Alley Cat Allies, a charity that calls itself “the global engine of change for cats.” So it’s no surprise that she cares for a colony of feral cats in the backyard of her Arlington, Va., home. “Every cat, big and small, should be valued and protected,” she says.
Her next-door neighbor, though, complained about the pack of cats. In 2015, Alley Cat Allies bought the neighbor’s home for $590,000. Last summer, the charity bought a second home in Arlington for $569,000.
Neither transaction was disclosed to the full board of the nonprofit, which is based in Bethesda, Md. The board rarely meets — it has yet to convene in 2018 — and the board chair, Donna Wilcox, is also a paid vice president of the charity. That’s unorthodox because as a board member, Wilcox has a duty to oversee Robinson, who is also her boss.
Alley Cat Allies is not a mom-and-pop charity: It raised nearly $10 million last year and employs about 25 people, according to its website. But Robinson runs the organization with few checks on her power, insiders say. It offers a case study in what can happen when there’s a lack of government or institutional oversight.
The trouble is that, to casual observers, Alley Cat Allies appears to be a model charity. It has been awarded four stars by Charity Navigator, which the ratings agency says makes it an “exceptional” nonprofit that “exceeds industry standards and outperforms most charities in its cause.” GuideStar, the world’s largest source of information on nonprofit organizations, gives Alley Cat Allies a Platinum seal, its highest level of recognition. State regulators who oversee charities have not taken a look at Alley Cat Allies.
This reflects a problem that goes beyond Alley Cat Allies: The vast majority of charities get little or no critical examination from ratings groups or regulators. Those that rely almost entirely on individual donors, as Alley Cat Allies does, avoid scrutiny from institutional or government supporters.
The result is that charities aren’t as effective as they could be if they were more accountable. Worse, a few bad apples can taint an entire sector. When stories of mismanagement surface at small charities or big ones — like the American Red Cross, the Wounded Warrior Project, or the Silicon Valley Community Foundation — trust in nonprofits suffers. According to the Edelman Trust Barometer, an annual survey, trust in nonprofits fell from 64 percent in 2017 to 42 percent in 2018 among a key group of potential donors — high-income, college-educated Americans ages 25 to 64.
Salaries and Purchases
Robinson founded Alley Cat Allies in 1990. The group, which says it has 650,000 supporters, advocates for humane policies to save the lives of feral cats, which are often caught and left to die in animal shelters.
A close look at the charity reveals a number of questionable practices. Robinson was paid $265,309 in total compensation for the fiscal year that ended on July 31, 2017, while Wilcox, the board chair and vice president, was paid $230,556 in salary and benefits. Together, their compensation amounts to more than 5 percent of the group’s revenue. The board sets the CEO’s pay, yet the board chair works for the CEO.
“It’s definitely problematic governance,” says Gene Takagi, a lawyer with the NEO Law Group, which specializes in nonprofit law.
Alley Cat Allies’ officials say the the salaries are appropriate, adding that “based on compensation experts and nonprofit surveys those salaries are reasonable and commensurate” with salaries of other nonprofits of comparable size and revenue.
The fact that neither of the charity’s two real-estate purchases were reviewed or approved by the full board is also a problem, Takagi says.
Beyond that, Alley Cat Allies appears to be a difficult place to work. On the website Glassdoor, Alley Cat Allies has more than a dozen anonymous, harshly negative reviews, assailing Robinson’s leadership and the board’s inaction.
Meantime, Alley Cat Allies has also pursued, at considerable expense, a copyright lawsuit against Elizabeth Putsche, a former staff member, and her husband over ownership of more than 17,000 cat photos. The Putsches have spent more than $150,000 on their own lawyers, and they have to tried to settle the suit, which they believe to be punishment for their decision to part ways with Robinson. “I feel like this is personal and not a good use of donor money,” says Elizabeth Putsche, who started her own nonprofit, For All Animals, after leaving Alley Cat Allies.
Alley Cat Allies wrote in an email to the Chronicle that it had reached a settlement with two individuals in 2016 and “though we would prefer not to be in court at all, we do have to defend ourselves and enforce the settlement.”
Board Oversight
Robinson and Wilcox declined repeated requests for interviews, and Wilcox answered only a few questions by email. Regarding the Arlington house purchase in 2015, she wrote:
It’s actually not unusual at all for nonprofits to own and invest in property, and it’s become a common strategy in today’s world where flexibility and diversification are key. ... Alley Cat Allies has a comprehensive diversified investment strategy which includes real estate as an investment option. Decisions to invest and purchase are based on extensive due diligence and analysis concurrent with performance benchmarks and investment guidelines.
She said the purchase was approved by the investment committee of the board consisting of herself, Robinson, and the board treasurer, a government economist named Karyen Chu.
Dina Paxenos, a Washington, D.C., real-estate agent and board member at the time, said she was unaware of the home purchase until the Chronicle asked her about it. “I’ve been in real estate a long time,” Paxenos said. “You’d think they would have talked to me.”
Alley Cat Allies says the location was not a factor in the purchase, adding that “this investment property does not directly affect our president, any other board member or employee of Alley Cat Allies. This purchase has resulted in absolutely no personal gain, financial or non-financial to the president, any board member or employee.”
The organization also told the Chronicle that the investments have been profitable and are exceeding the returns the organization has earned in its market portfolio.
Jenifer Gager Holland, an associate vice president at BoardSource, which advocates for good governance at charities, said: “Generally speaking, it is the full board’s responsibility to provide financial oversight of an organization. I would include major asset purchases as a part of that.”
In a publication called Principles for Good Governance and Ethical Practice, Independent Sector, a coalition of nonprofits, says: “Concentrating authority for the organization’s governance and management practices in one or two people removes valuable checks and balances that help ensure that conflicts of interest and other personal concerns do not take precedence over the best interests of the organization.”
Charity Ratings
Otherwise, Wilcox defends the organization’s transparency and governance by citing the top ratings from Charity Navigator and GuideStar, which are also featured on the group’s website.
Those ratings, though, rely mostly on self-reported information from charities. What’s more, Jacob Harold, the chief executive of GuideStar, says GuideStar does not intend for its bronze, silver, gold, or platinum designations to be used to rate charities.
Alley Cat Allies “provided sufficient data (assuming they’ve told the truth) so they’ve legitimately earned a Platinum transparency seal,” Harold says. But because thousands of charities report to GuideStar, “we don’t have the capacity to independently verify each data point,” he says.
Michael Thatcher, the CEO of Charity Navigator, faces a similar problem. He has a staff of about 20 people who generate ratings for about 9,000 charities; they can’t pore over Internal Revenue Service filings. Instead, Charity Navigator employees rely on the internet to spot legal or ethical issues that arise at individual charities. In effect, this means Charity Navigator reports on problems only after they surface elsewhere.
Meantime, the Maryland Secretary of State’s office oversees the state’s 14,000 charities with a staff of six people, including one lawyer and one investigator, according to Michael Schlein, the division’s administrator. Its law-enforcement efforts are “mostly but not entirely complaint driven,” he said. He said he wasn’t aware of any issues at Alley Cat Allies.
