05/05/2006
Policemen Support Fund is a good example of a charitable organization that gets an "F" rating from the Better Business Bureau despite our having no complaints on record for it. We have a good reason for this rating, though, and we tell you about this organization in the hope that by forewarning you, you won't have a complaint about it.
Policemen Support Fund (PSF) describes itself on its website as a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization whose purpose is to provide "financial support and assistance to policemen and policewomen who have become injured on duty" and to "help our fallen and active men and women that can no longer maintain their standard of living due to service related injury." Part of their mission is to assist law enforcement officers "who were forced to retire as a result of a disabling injury sustained in the line of duty, adjust to, and cope with, the many difficulties associated with an untimely and unplanned career ending." They also, they say, "assist[s] their families with funeral preparations if someone loses [sic] their life during service and give[s] financial assistance for their children with college tuition."
We have concerns about this organization. First, they apparently seek contributions from businesses all over the country by means of printed solicitations that appear to be invoices. Although federal law requires such solicitations to contain a notice in large (at least 30-point), boldface type that contrasts prominently with the background as far as color is concerned, that they are only solicitations, not bills, this organization ignores these requirements. Indeed, the president of one large company turned over to us a "Second Notice" he'd received, addressed to "Friends," informing them that PSF had not yet received the $50 company was supposed to have previously pledged and reminding them that their contribution is 100 percent tax deductible. Nowhere did it inform him in type of any size or color that this was a solicitation, not an invoice.
No one at the company had made a pledge, and no one had ever received any previous notice.
Although at least one of their locations is in southern California, PSF is not registered with the California Attorney General, as the law requires. Nor have we been able to verify their 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status with the Internal Revenue Service.
Many companies send solicitations in the guise of invoices, and many businesses respond to them with payment, mistaking them to be legitimate invoices. In larger companies, such solicitations might routinely be paid, on the assumption that someone in the company did authorize such a pledge.
Now that you know that this organization's solicitations do not comply with legal requirements and that it is not registered in California in compliance with legal requirements, do you also know how it will use your contributions if you send them?
Neither do we.
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