The good news, perhaps, is that we’re getting suckered a bit less.

The for-profit firms that raise money for charities collected $361.3 million from well-meaning Californians in 2013 – and pocketed $161.2 million, or 45.5 percent, of the take, according to the latest figures from the Attorney General’s Office.

That’s better than the year before, when commercial fundraisers kept 63 percent of the money raised in nonprofits’ names.

Attorney General Kamala Harris has bemoaned “the alarming extent to which charitable donations are often diverted to for-profit companies.” But Assemblywoman Jacqui Irwin, D-Thousand Oaks, noted that the trend seems to be going in the right direction, at least. The two introduced a bill last week to crack down on firms trying to avoid reporting requirements by calling themselves “fundraising counsel” rather than “commercial fundraisers.” (More on that in a minute.)

Thirty-one Orange County charities used commercial fundraisers in 2013, according to the attorney general’s data, and they fared a bit worse than their cohorts statewide. Of the $3.9 million raised on behalf of Orange County charities, commercial fundraisers kept $1.9 million, or about half the take.

Be warned: Generally speaking, charities with the words “police” or “firefighter” in their names kept less than one-third of what was raised on their behalf, with the overwhelming majority going to the for-profit fundraiser.

In their defense, officials said some campaigns costing millions were strategic investments that will pay off far more than they cost, in future contributions.

Others, however, are run-of-the-mill, we-need-your-money-now-please affairs, where for-profit firms kept huge chunks of what donors believed would fund good works.

Charities often argue that it’s not really money out of their pockets, since professional fundraisers take a percentage of proceeds, or a pre-determined amount if a minimum is not met, said Sandra Miniutti, vice president of Charity Navigator, a nonprofit watchdog.

“However, from a donor’s perspective, that argument does not hold, since it is actually the donor’s money that is going to a professional fundraiser as opposed to the charity they thought they were supporting,” Miniutti said by email. “In large part, it is still professional companies taking advantage of the lack of education on the giving public’s part.”

And that’s why the Attorney General’s Office started gathering these numbers to begin with.

CLUNKERS?

The most extreme cases raise far less than the average. According to the data:

• One commercial fundraiser logged $332,000 for Plan International USA, a highly rated charity that operates in 50 developing countries trying to end the cycle of poverty for children. That campaign wound up costing the charity all that – plus an additional $3.5 million.

• Another for-profit fundraiser drummed up $687,000 for the well-regarded Save the Children Federation. That cost $1.8 million.

• A campaign for Open Doors With Brother Andrew of Santa Ana raised $7,753 – of which the charity got $7.75. Open Doors serves persecuted Christians in more than 60 countries.

• A campaign for Amvets in Anaheim raised $10,158, but wound up costing it $34,367. Amvets runs thrift stores that support, promote and defend the rights of California veterans and their families.

Leona Wheeler, Amvets’ new executive director, said her predecessors had contracted with a fundraiser understanding that returns would be much higher. When things didn’t pan out, the campaign was halted. The two staffers who spearheaded it are no longer with the organization, she said.

How can a fundraiser wind up costing a charity so much? Those campaigns raised less than the fees guaranteed to the commercial fundraiser upfront, the Attorney General’s Office said.

Commercial fundraisers and charities fishing for debit-card donors say the attorney general’s figures do not always reflect the long-term value of their work.

DISTORED LENS

Seattle’s Public Outreach fundraising – which ran the Plan International campaign that wound up costing nearly $4 million, and several others that were deep into negative territory – specializes in signing up monthly donors for big-name charities such as Childfund International, the World Society for the Protection of Animals, and Amnesty International.

This is called “face-to-face fundraising.” The value of those monthly donations, over the course of years, is simply not reflected in the attorney general’s annual snapshot, said Bryan McKinnon, managing director for Public Outreach fundraising.

“Critics of fundraising in general, particularly outsourced fundraising, typically apply the frame where the charity is the girl on the tracks, tricked into being tied up, and the fundraising company is the evil mustachioed villain who has swindled the charity out of their money,” McKinnon said by email.

“The charities we represent tend to be financially huge … have lawyers/CFOs insist on strict protection clauses in their contracts, and are very financially savvy professionals. If face-to-face fundraising didn’t work, charities would not do it.”

The “payback time” for the kind of face-to-face fundraising that Public Outreach does is 24 months, he said, and the return is two to three times the initial investment over a five-year period. That doesn’t show in the attorney general’s metrics.

“Basically, by forcing charities to make a return within the calendar year on any investment would mean that the charity would actually start to shrink, there would be no long-term planning, no bigger returns possible, and there would be a lot of lower-yield campaigns,” he said.

Save the Children used a similar company – Grassroots Campaigns of Boston – to sign up monthly donors. The $1.8 million it appears to lose in the attorney general’s report is the total compensation paid up front to the fundraiser to do that job, said Earl Moran, head of global sponsorship.

The attorney general’s annual figures “do not reflect the total lifetime contributions of the donor,” Moran said by email. “Based on our years of fundraising experience, we anticipate that we will continue to receive monthly contributions from most of these donors year after year. We estimate that we will raise more than $5 million from these donors over the next five years.”

Miniutti, of Charity Navigator, remains skeptical.

“As far as campaigns signing up monthly users, that could also happen if the charity ran a campaign without the use of professional fundraisers,” she said.

HIGH-YIELD EXCEPTIONS

Some fundraisers stand out for delivering far more than the average to charities.

The Gavel Group of Lake Forest, which produces charity auctions, live and silent, returned an average of 72 percent of revenues to charities statewide (the average was 54.6 percent), and an average of 73.5 percent to charities in Orange County (the average was 49 percent here).

“Sure leads one to ask why any nonprofit would use anyone else,” quipped Larry Zucker, founder of The Gavel Group.

Zucker noted that many of his competitors are missing from the list. They are not complying with state reporting and disclosure requirements, he concluded, and are getting away with it.

We have asked the attorney general to explain the absence of those firms from the list. The attorney general, perhaps not coincidentally, is pursuing a crackdown on fundraisers who skirt the requirements by calling themselves “fundraising counsel” rather than “commercial fundraiser.” Only the latter are currently required to report to the state.

CRACKDOWN

That brings us back to that bill introduced by Rep. Irwin and Attorney General Harris.

AB556 would require disclosures by third-party fundraisers that now skirt the requirements. It would also extend the statute of limitations for prosecuting wrongdoers from five years to 10. That’s important because prosecuting such cases is complex, the Attorney General’s Office said.

The bill is borne out of frustrations attendant to a case called People v. Help Hospitalized Veterans. Harris sued the Winchester charity in 2012 for breach of fiduciary duty, self-dealing, excessive executive compensation, misrepresentation in solicitations and unfair competition, among other things. Its principals misused some $4.4 million of the charity’s money, Harris charged.

Several people entered settlement agreements with the attorney general and agreed to pay restitution, but others escaped without penalty because of how current laws are written.

“There are a lot of great charities out there having an enormous impact,” Irwin said. “And when you hear about a few of the bad ones, it hurts them all.

“When there’s greater transparency, everyone behaves better. We just want to make sure residents have confidence in the 70,000 charities doing great work in California.”

See the attorney general’s data for all commercial fundraisers at oag.ca.gov/charities/publications.

Contact the writer: tsforza@ocregister.comTwitter: @ocwatchdog