Author: Bitter

I decided to look at the VPC finances to see how they were doing. The last time I checked them out was nearly 3 years ago! How could I have let so much time pass without checking in our pals Josh and Kristen? Only this time, I think the only way to fully express their situation is in a graph.

You can actually see Josh drove them in the hole to the tune of more than $40,000 in 2006. I guess that’s when Helmke drew all the gun control donations back to the Brady Campaign. At the end of 2008, the reserves he has built back up are still less than his salary for one year. Between 2002 and 2008, their reserves are down by 86% and revenues are down by 47%. What board of directors allows this to go on? I can’t fathom that any leader of any organization I’ve worked with would be allowed to stay on if they delivered the same kind of performance. Regardless, lead on, Josh! Heckuva job!

Even with this very handy overview of their finances, it doesn’t tell the real story of VPC’s changes over the years. For that, I realize we needed one more data point. So I fixed it.

I’m not done crunching numbers with the Brady Campaign. And I have to give them some credit for remaining consistent in their spending given the tight times they’ve had over the last few years.

I was curious if the organization (or rather, organizations, since I examined both the Center and the Campaign together) would make cuts in any one particular area. Would they figure a way to cut fundraising costs, axe general management expenses, or chop programs? Other than the blip of 2005, they have actually been consistent in the percentage of their expenses that each of those categories eats.

That blip in 2005 showed they cut services to increase fundraising. This is rather interesting if you look back at a graph I already posted that showed their revenues for the same time.

See that bid drop off for 2005? That means that increasing the percentage of their expenses on fundraising didn’t actually stop the plunge in revenue. Regardless of the fact that fundraising surged to more than 25% of their expenses, their revenues dropped by more than 20%. Even though their revenues continued to fall, never by so much as 2005. That tells me they get more for their dollar by investing in programs rather than direct fundraising costs. Some other groups could learn a thing or two about that concept.

Again, by reader request, I reworked the numbers a bit. beatbox made a good point that combining the total donations and expenses of both the Brady Campaign and Brady Center would give us a better picture of the organization’s overall health. I would agree in very broad terms.*

As you can see, 2008 is really the outlier when you look at the combined revenue/expense model. That shouldn’t be shocking because of not only the recession, but the Heller loss early in the year before most donations arrive. There is definitely a downward trend, but their combined “cushions” didn’t really take a major hit until 2008.

*It was still handy to break down the individual data because that tells us if they are heading for a re-alignment and/or shifting their strategy. At some point, they will need to reorganize and probably rename themselves again. Consider that the main event they use to tug at heartstrings happened just two months after I was born – and I’m approaching the age where women start lying about their age. There’s no context or meaning to it anymore for a good number of Americans. With the courts as the new major battleground for the next few decades, it just makes sense for them to shift their limited resources to litigation and related support services. These are the changes we will see in the organization breakdown featured in the first post on the subject.

In the last post, beatbox mentioned the Brady campaign finance data for their PAC arm and how much it has been hurting in recent years. I didn’t include that information in the initial look at the Brady finances because without diving into tons of very convoluted campaign finance reports, it’s a pain in the ass to break out by individual year as opposed to election cycle. And really, a year-by-year breakdown won’t give you any more insight that’s worth looking at. I wanted to keep the data sets in one post the same, or in the case of this post, similar.

Joe Huffman also piped up that he had some older 990s from the Brady camp, though it turns out they are only for the Center. Hugely useful data going back to 1999 (technically 1997, but missing 1998, so I’ll start out in 1999) for the Center, and he deserves a huge kudos for putting that together. But, because the Campaign appears to have been their core source of income until 2008, I don’t want to skew the data by updating only the Center’s numbers in the last post.

So what do the prior two paragraphs mean? Just that here is the data for the Brady PAC donation/expenditures/cash on hand for 1997-2008 (the 1998-2008 cycles) and the Brady Center revenue/expenses/ending assets for 1999-2008. (The ending asset is what I previously described as their cushion or nest egg, essentially savings they can dip into when they spend too much.)

Remember, these are similar time periods, not perfect matches. The PAC cycle includes two years that the Center graph does not.

For those of you keeping score at home, this shows that the “cushion” they could dip into when major legal threats come up has fallen by more than 67% since 1999.

Two years ago today, mock stories appeared in the April Fool’s Day edition of The Outdoor Wire, and one stuck out at me as more of a potential prediction than a joke:

Brady Center Ceases Operations
Blames SCOTUS for “dwindling finances and shrinking support”
Washington, D.C. – “We fought a hard fight, and lost. The people have spoken.” That’s the terse explanation offered up on the Brady Center’s website, announcing the dissolution of the longtime organization. An overwhelming majority decision (7-2) by the Supreme Court in 2008 that affirmed the individual right of firearms ownership led to a sweeping nationwide rejection of anti-firearms legislation and a precipitous decline in Brady Center financial support. As the Brady organization crumbled, the National Rifle Association and other pro-gun groups saw memberships and coffers swell, allowing the NRA’s legislative action group to challenge and overturn what the NRA-ILA has described as “ridiculous” or “unenforceable” laws nationwide.

It’s possible that the only things wrong about this silly joke were the vote count (we won by 5-4), the Center closing shop before the Campaign, and the timing.

Looking at the Brady Campaign & Brady Center form 990s from 2004-2008, there is an unmistakable trend that may herald the real need to write the “joke” headline. Consider that the Brady Campaign – the legislative arm of the gun control organization – has seen donations drop off by more than 53% from 2004-2008. (The latest data available is from 2008, as 2009 tax documents are likely being filed now.) Total revenue that factors in revenue from assets and investments as well as the donations, is off slightly more – by more than 54% in the same time period. Unfortunately for them, the Brady Campaign has not been as successful at slashing expenses.

All I can say is ouch. That’s gotta hurt in a big way. I’m going to assume that the leveling off of expenses means they have slashed as much as possible without cutting significant staff or consultants. Obviously, that will have to change. A drop like this can’t simply be blamed on the recession, especially since the drops started two years before the official start of the downturn. (I don’t have data prior to 2004, so the drop may have started long before then.)

But upon seeing this, I suggested to Sebastian that perhaps they were re-aligning and putting more staff onto the Brady Center’s payroll – that is, their foundation division. It’s amazing how changing a few words can make it so you’re no longer lobbying for change, but merely educating lawmakers about the issues. Yes, it’s perfectly legal. To find out, we opened up all of their 990s from the same period, 2004-2008.

As you can see, they aren’t having much luck, either. Total revenue is down about $800K over 4 years, and expenses haven’t been consistently cut to match. The Center has been much better about keeping a nest egg of assets than the Campaign, but thanks to spending more than they receive in donations, even that cushion is down by more than 10% over the last 4 years.

In fact, at the end of 2008, the Brady Campaign was actually in the red by more than $450K. We can presume they spent 2009 fundraising like the devil and slashing expenses to make up for that, but it 2009 wasn’t exactly a great year for non-profits with so much uncertainty in the economy. The Brady Center, as mentioned before, has done much better about making sure it has some money to fall back on, so they had just under $2 million in savings.

So I guess the real question is: In what year does the April Fool’s gag of 2008 actually come true?