I have concerns about this charity. They have been soliciting my elderly mother and, because she cares deeply about the welfare of native Americans, she has made donations. I went to guidestar.org and looked at the organization's Form 990s from 2006 to 2010. Revenues are very modest from a high of $224,000 in 2006 to $75,000 in 2010. Clearly, the organization is financially weak.
I would like to believe funds are reaching Native Americans in need, but there is no clear evidence that that is happening.
There are other stronger charities serving Native Americans. Better to donate to them.
There is something really not right about this charity. Somehow, we got on their "call" list. My husband especially likes to support charities that help on reservations, so we figured initially that we must have been on a list that was sold. In any case, the calls increased in frequency until they were calling us weekly. Over a year ago, we started trying to get them to stop calling, and they simply won't. Our requests became increasingly desperate when the frequency of calls increased. In August & September of 2008, I repeatedly (over 30 times) told the callers to please remove us from their call list. Sometimes the callers were rude and just hung up on me. I requested to speak to a supervisior and was told there wasn't one. Then, I started calling back the phone number that displays on Caller ID and started leaving messages -- the phone is never answered and I never got a return call. After leaving ten generic messages asking for a return call over almost two months, I left six messages in October demanding to be removed from their call list. And the calls just kept coming. Beginning in October, we used a feature on our phone to block calls from their number. Between 10/1/2008 and 3/1/2009, we received over a THOUSAND calls from this organization. At the beginning of March, I removed that block and again tried the personal approach of repeatedly asking them to stop calling. By now, we're receiving 4-6 phone calls a DAY from this group. They will not stop calling. I've left six more messages on their answering machine, and still have never received a call back, and the calls continue to come. I put the block back on their phone number, but the calls continue at the same rate. I found their Web site and sent them a cease & desist demand email, and the calls continue to come at the same rate! After looking at their 990, I found the names of the "president" and "director," a husband & wife team, and I started trying to find more information. It's not good -- they were associated with the American Relief Association: http://foundationcenter.org/pnd/news/story.jhtml?id=30400027 There is a physical address listed on "United States Humane Charities" 990 form, and I suggest using Google Street View Map to look at the location.