Funding: Alliance amassed $45.9 million but very little from members’ dues, IRS reports show. Other records cite backing from tobacco firms.
The country’s leading smokers’ rights group has built a fat war chest despite minimal support from the 3 million people it claims as members, according to public records and internal documents that suggest its only significant backer is Big Tobacco.
The National Smokers Alliance has become a major force in public smoking battles in California and elsewhere, while portraying itself as “a nonprofit, grass-roots membership organization with more than 3 million members.” That claim in the group’s brochures also appears regularly in stories on the Alexandria, Va.-based group by major news organizations.
But a review of the group’s annual reports to the Internal Revenue Service shows that a tiny fraction of the putative members pay the nominal $10 dues the group says it charges. According to the IRS reports, of the $45.9 million amassed by the group in its first three years, very little came from dues.
In fiscal 1996, for example, when total receipts were more than $9 million, dues contributed just under $74,000. In other words, the group collected enough dues for 7,400 members.
Read more: http://articles.latimes.com/1998/mar/29/news/mn-34044
