If you give to a charity over the phone, there's a growing likelihood that most of your donation will go to the telemarketer instead, according to a Bee analysis of state records.

More than a third of California charity telemarketing campaigns sent less than 20 cents on the dollar to the charities during 2007, the most recent year on record. Those campaigns and a smaller number of charity auctions and concerts raised $93 million for commercial fundraisers, and just $3 million for the charities.

In 76 of those campaigns, California charities got no money at all.

Local charities ranging from California Professional Firefighters to Friends of the River were involved in low-return campaigns. But, far from being shocked by the returns, officials at several say they were prepared to eat the losses in hopes of expanding their ranks of future donors.

"We budget this to be a break-even enterprise," said Lynn Upchurch, development director at the Crocker Art Museum. The Crocker recently conducted two telemarketing campaigns that generated $27,300 but cost the museum $27,600. "People who renew their membership over the phone have a longer relationship with us than people who renew on a piece of paper."

Philanthropy watchdogs, however, say this is not what donors have in mind when they give.

"We think donors should be appalled by this," said Ken Berger, president and CEO of charitynavigator.com, a nonprofit group that rates charities on how well they use donors' money. "When the charity is seeing nothing until way down the road, we don't think that's a good enough return."

Practice rare in the past

Charity campaigns where telemarketers get at least 4 cents of every 5 cents donated used to be pretty rare. In 2002, such campaigns sent about $38 million in California donations to telemarketers. Since then, that figure has more than doubled, to $93 million.

Charities are turning to these campaigns more often because of fundraising problems related to the economy, which began deteriorating in 2007, said Bennett Weiner, chief operating officer of the Better Business Bureau's Wise Giving Alliance. Sacramento started seeing an increase in low-return campaigns even earlier, largely because of the use of telemarketing by two firefighter advocacy groups based here.

The state does not have much power to limit fundraising fees, according to Belinda Johns, senior assistant attorney general and boss of California's charities section, citing some 1980s U.S. Supreme Court decisions. In a 1988 case, the court ruled that North Carolina's attempt to dictate what were reasonable and unreasonable fundraising fees infringed on freedom of speech.

The motivation for charities is clear: They find it's easier to get money from a recent donor, so they effectively trade donors' initial contributions to the telemarketer for a list of their names, Weiner said. They then hit those donors again, he said, or, if the donor made a recurring pledge over the phone, they cross their fingers and hope the money keeps coming in.

The approach can backfire, Weiner said, because even though charities are exempt from the do-not-call registry, they risk alienating people by bugging them.

Still, with the economic climate worsening by the day, he said, "In 2009, you may see more of this."

Benefit may be delayed

If you were one of thousands of Californians who recently gave to the Washington, D.C.-based American Diabetes Association over the phone, your initial donation may have done more to help the troubled economy of Corpus Christi, Texas, than to help fight diabetes.

Corpus Christi is the home of Futuremarket, one of the diabetes association's telemarketers.

Futuremarket raised $13 million in California for the diabetes association during two campaigns in 2007 but claimed $17 million in expenses, state records show. That scenario also played out in other states.

"They must have called 20 times. I kept hanging up on them, but they finally stopped calling only after I got the rep on the phone and told them quite vehemently to stop calling me," said Jenny Ruhl, an East Coast blogger who often writes about her own struggles with diabetes. "Much of what the ADA does to raise money is very troubling to many of us in the diabetes community."

Call The Bee's Phillip Reese, (916) 321-1137.