 |
InfoCision Management Corporation is a company that operates call centers. Based in Bath Township, Ohio outside of Akron, it is the second-largest teleservice company in the United States. It operates 30 call centers at 12 locations in Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania, employing more than 4,000 people. [1] The company "specializes in political, Christian and nonprofit fundraising, and sales and customer care." [2]
InfoCision was founded by Gary Taylor in his suburban Akron home in 1982. For the first three years, IMC managed its client's telefundraising campaigns by serving as a marketing consultant while a separate call center company made the phone calls. In 1985, InfoCision opened its first call center. Since then, InfoCision has become one of the largest privately held call center companies in the world. Today, InfoCision raises more money for nonprofit organizations than any other outbound teleservices company. [3] In 2004, Taylor stepped down as president and CEO to become chairman. [4]
On April 20, 2012, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine announced a settlement agreement he had reached with InfoCision. After an investigation, the Attorney General's Charitable Law Section "found reason to believe InfoCision violated several sections of the Ohio Charitable Organizations Act." InfoCision denied violating the law. As part of the settlement, InfoCision agreed to pay $75,000 and "fully abide by the state's laws on soliciting charitable contributions." [5]
On October 10, 2012, the company announced that Craig Taylor, son of company founder Gary Taylor, was promoted to the position of CEO, replacing Carl Albright. [6]
InfoCision's services are used by a wide variety of clients. These include national nonprofit organizations, Fortune 100 companies and smaller businesses, focusing on customer acquisition, customer care and retention, and nonprofit fundraising, as well as volunteer recruitment. The company is divided into nine divisions, which are financial services, telecommunications, media, consumer and business services and religious, nonprofit and political fundraising. [7]
In addition to call centers, InfoCision also provides direct mail/bulk fulfillment services, offering variable on-demand data printing services, a one-to-one marketing strategy. On-demand printing allows different elements such as text, graphics and images to change from one printed piece to the next without stopping or slowing down the printing process to deliver a customized message to customers. [8]
InfoCision telefundraisers often request that people volunteer to mail fifteen preprinted solicitation letters to their friends and family. The volunteers are asked to use their own postage, and the funds are sent to InfoCision, earmarked for reputable charities such as the March of Dimes and the American Cancer Society. [9]
All information regarding percentages of donations used for fundraising is made available upon request. [10] InfoCision responded with its own four-point statement: (1) the company must be on the right track if charities continue returning to them; (2) acquiring new donors and reengaging lapsed donors can be costly; (3) charities' future fundraising efforts will benefit from donors that the company brought into the system; and (4) the system was comparable to marketing techniques such as loss leaders that are common in the commercial world. [11]
In 2008, InfoCision and its employees donated more than $450,000 to various causes, and in 2009, despite the economic downturn, donated more than $250,000, in addition to volunteering. [12]
The National Rifle Association of America paid InfoCision more than $80,000,000 for solicitation of donations and membership processing services for the period 2012 through 2015, according to the NRA's publicly available IRS Form 990 filings. [13]
A nonprofit organization (NPO), also known as a nonbusiness entity, nonprofit institution, or simply a nonprofit, is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, as opposed to an entity that operates as a business aiming to generate a profit for its owners. A nonprofit organization is subject to the non-distribution constraint: any revenues that exceed expenses must be committed to the organization's purpose, not taken by private parties. Depending on the local laws, charities are regularly organized as non-profits. A host of organizations may be nonprofit, including some political organizations, schools, hospitals, business associations, churches, foundations, social clubs, and consumer cooperatives. Nonprofit entities may seek approval from governments to be tax-exempt, and some may also qualify to receive tax-deductible contributions, but an entity may incorporate as a nonprofit entity without having tax-exempt status.
Telemarketing is a method of direct marketing in which a salesperson solicits prospective customers to buy products, subscriptions or services, either over the phone or through a subsequent face to face or web conferencing appointment scheduled during the call. Telemarketing can also include recorded sales pitches programmed to be played over the phone via automatic dialing.
United Way is an international network of over 1,800 local nonprofit fundraising affiliates. Prior to 2015, United Way was the largest nonprofit organization in the United States by donations from the public. Individual United Ways mobilize a single fundraising campaign to raise money for various nonprofits, with most donations coming through payroll deductions.
A donation is a gift for charity, humanitarian aid, or to benefit a cause. A donation may take various forms, including money, alms, services, or goods such as clothing, toys, food, or vehicles. A donation may satisfy medical needs such as blood or organs for transplant.
Advertising mail, also known as direct mail, junk mail, mailshot or admail, letterbox drop or letterboxing (Australia), is the delivery of advertising material to recipients of postal mail. The delivery of advertising mail forms a large and growing service for many postal services, and direct-mail marketing forms a significant portion of the direct marketing industry. Some organizations attempt to help people opt out of receiving advertising mail, in many cases motivated by a concern over its negative environmental impact.
Fundraising or fund-raising is the process of seeking and gathering voluntary financial contributions by engaging individuals, businesses, charitable foundations, or governmental agencies. Although fundraising typically refers to efforts to gather money for non-profit organizations, it is sometimes used to refer to the identification and solicitation of investors or other sources of capital for for-profit enterprises.
Matching funds are funds that are set to be paid in proportion to funds available from other sources. Matching fund payments usually arise in situations of charity or public good. The terms cost sharing, in-kind, and matching can be used interchangeably but refer to different types of donations.
Street fundraising consists of various ways of asking for donations on behalf of a charity. Those asking for donations may be paid employees of the charity, or they may be volunteers.
The American Diabetes Association (ADA) is a United States-based nonprofit that seeks to educate the public about diabetes and to help those affected by it through funding research to manage, cure and prevent diabetes, including type 1 diabetes, type 2 diabetes, gestational diabetes, and pre-diabetes. It is a network of 565,000 volunteers which includes 20,000 healthcare professionals and administration staff members.
Cause marketing is marketing done by a for-profit business that seeks to both increase profits and to better society in accordance with corporate social responsibility, such as by including activist messages in advertising.
Network for Good is an American-certified B Corporation software company that offers fundraising software and coaching for charities and non-profit organizations. The company was founded in 2001 by America Online (AOL), Cisco Systems, and Yahoo! and has processed over $2.2 billion in donations since its inception. Network for Good charges between 3% and 5% transaction processing fee for donations, in addition to any subscription fees that the charity might incur. The transaction processing costs may be covered by the donor or by the nonprofit organization.
InfoCision Stadium–Summa Field is a college American football stadium in Akron, Ohio and the home field of the Akron Zips football team at the University of Akron. New for the 2009 football season, the official ground-breaking ceremony for the stadium was held on April 4, 2008, and it opened on September 12, 2009, for a sold-out game between the Akron Zips and the Morgan State Bears. The stadium was constructed to replace the Rubber Bowl, which was the prior home of the University of Akron Zips football team. Four companies hold naming rights to various parts of the stadium.
Candid is an information service specializing in reporting on U.S. nonprofit companies. In 2016, its database provided information on 2.5 million organizations. It is the product of the February 2019 merger of GuideStar with Foundation Center.
Harvard E. "Pete" Palmer Jr. is a prominent national authority on promotion and operation of car donation programs for charitable causes. He is "arguably one of the individuals with the broadest knowledge of the far-flung vehicle donation industry." He is a spokesperson for the Vehicle Donation Coalition. His writing includes an op-ed piece in The San Francisco Examiner about how to choose a worthy cause for donating a car, citing California's State Registrar of Charitable Trusts as a source for checking the records of particular charities soliciting in that state.
The Disabled Veterans National Foundation (DVNF) is an American registered charity that provides service for disabled veterans. Founded in 2007, the organization is based in Lanham, Maryland.
The Reynolds cancer charities refer to the four "sham charities": the Cancer Fund of America, Inc. (CFA), Cancer Support Services Inc. (CSS), Children’s Cancer Fund of America Inc. (CCFOA), and The Breast Cancer Society Inc. (BCS) that began operations in 1984 and were shut down in 2016. They were run by James T. Reynolds, James Reynold II, Kyle Effler, Rose Perkins, Kristina Reynolds and other Reynolds family members and friends. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) described the Reynolds cancer charities as "one of the largest charity fraud cases ever". They were listed as among America's worst charities, based on high management costs, high salaries to directors, and low (1%–2.5%) proportion of income disbursed to beneficiaries. The investigation of the Reynolds' sham charities, initiated by the FTC and all fifty states plus the District of Columbia, resulted in "one of the largest actions brought to date [2015] by enforcers against charity fraud." The May 2015 historic civil suit, alleged that CFA, CSS, CCFOA, and BCS had collected more than $187 million in donations from consumers and that an "overwhelming majority" of the money went to "the perpetrators, their families and friends", and for-profit fundraisers contracted by the charities. Reynolds' and associates contracted about ten of these for-profit solicitors who "earned more than 80 cents of every dollar donated" [to CFA] for a total of $80.4 million."
Wishing Well Foundation USA is a charity that was founded by husband and wife Elwin and Lisbeth LeBeau in 1995. It seeks to fulfill the wishes of terminally ill children in the United States. The organization has come under criticism in the past for its misleading telemarketer calls and extremely high overhead expenses.
Circle of Friends for American Veterans (COFAV), also known as "American Homeless Veterans," was a 501(c)(3) organization that supported veterans and related causes. It was founded in 1993 in Falls Church, Virginia by Brian Arthur Hampton. The charity has faced criticism for allocating only about 10% of its income to charitable causes, with the remainder being paid to fundraisers.
Outreach Calling Inc is a for-profit fundraiser which was incorporated in 2009. It is headquartered in New Jersey and has offices in the United States and Canada with a virtual office in Reno, Nevada. The firm's telemarketers solicit funds on behalf of not-for-profit charities.
Philanthropy poses a number of ethical issues:
Attorney General Mike DeWine announced today an Assurance of Discontinuance agreement with Akron-based InfoCision Management Corporation regarding its professional solicitation services on behalf of various charitable organizations.