Little Rock Non-proft Makes Unenviable List

We realize Little Rock isn’t in our coverage area, but we couldn’t help noticing a recent item regarding Union Rescue Mission, located in our capital city. Union Rescue Mission, which targets victims of hunger and abuse – and people struggling with addiction – in Arkansas and neighboring states, showed up on a list of the 20 worst charities in America.

The ranking was courtesy of Charity Navigator, a non-profit Web site that tracks expenses via charities’ disclosure statements to the IRS in an effort to provide donors with an assessment of how well the organizations run themselves. Charity Navigator compiled the ranking by examining the supply side of more than 5,500 charities.

The study showed Union Rescue Mission’s administrative expenses in fiscal 2008 were 62.1 percent of its total expenses, the fourth-worst percentage in the nation. The report also indicated Union Rescue Mission pursues its efforts through “a few key Baptist reverends,” and that executive director William Toffett said the increase in administrative expenses were “due more to accounting issues than operational costs, suggesting the group’s recent poor performance is not indicative of fundamental inefficiencies in the mission itself.”