>Are they directly beholding to companies that run ads in their
publication? No.
>Do they owe someone someplace for some sort of supplementary income? I have to
>believe they do. What they do is far, far more costly than publishing a simple
>product-oriented, market-specific magazine (like a car magazine or a home
>improvement magazine) and someone has to be paying for it. The fact that I
>never
>am told who is paying for it, and instead am lead to believe they do all this
>out of their altruism, makes me *very* skeptical.
Smart guy. They (Consumers Union) get huge amounts of money donated to
them via charitable foundations and grants. They are an IRS 501c3
non-profit activist group, involved in various political causes and aligned
with other liberal activist groups. There's literally hundreds of millions
of $ floating around such circles each year and CU gets big chunks of it.
Non-profit foundations have over $350 billion in assets and MUST give away
$12 billion every year at this point.
>Also their frequent
>off-the-wall conclusions often lead me to believe something is directing their
>actions. Anyone loves them so much they want to prove me wrong, great. I'd
love
>to see just exactly where all their money comes from.
It's a great question, but they can be secretive about their funding and
total $$ amounts.
Alex
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