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The ASPCA sits on a $466 million portfolio and runs one dog-and-cat adoption center

The ASPCA Banks a $466 Million Portfolio While Running One Dog-and-Cat Adoption Center

by
M.A. Rothman

By M.A. RothmanSeptember 16, 2026 · 4 min read
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The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals brought in $446 million in 2024 and finished the year holding more than $724 million in assets, according to its own federal tax filing. A watchdog report built on that filing says the charity sits on a $466 million investment portfolio, pays its chief executive about $1.2 million a year, and runs exactly one dog-and-cat adoption center, in New York City.

Those numbers are back in circulation this September, and they deserve a hard look from anyone who has ever teared up at a late-night commercial and reached for a credit card.

What the tax return shows

The ASPCA’s Form 990 for 2024, summarized by ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer, reports total revenue of $446,134,125 against expenses of $387,928,226. In plain terms, the charity took in roughly $58 million more than it spent in a single year. Total assets stood at $724,808,552, and net assets, what is left after liabilities, at $639,933,550.

That cushion has been growing fast. In 2020 the ASPCA reported $470 million in total assets. By 2024 the figure was nearly $725 million, an increase of more than 50 percent in four years.

The same filing lists President and CEO Matt Bershadker’s reported compensation at $1,113,870, plus $112,532 in other compensation, for a total of about $1.23 million.

The watchdog’s case

The Center for the Environment and Welfare, a group that has been campaigning against the ASPCA since 2023, laid out the rest in a report titled “Factory Fundraising.” Drawing on the 2024 return, it says the ASPCA holds “almost $725 million in assets, including a $466 million investment portfolio.”

Its central complaint is about where the money does not go. “Despite what many people believe, the ASPCA does not operate a network of pet shelters and is not affiliated with any of the countless local SPCAs across the country,” the report says. “The ASPCA operates a single pet shelter in Manhattan.” According to the group, the ASPCA shared less than four percent of its 2024 budget with local pet shelters through its grant program.

The report itemizes other spending from the return: $149.9 million on fundraising, $7.1 million on executive compensation, $6.9 million on travel, $12.2 million on printing and $19 million on data processing. It also says 383 staffers earned six-figure salaries in 2024 and that Bershadker received a bonus of $182,205.

Its appendix lists the individual grants to shelters, and the pattern is telling. About two dozen organizations received six-figure sums, and one topped $1 million: $1,065,500 to Brother Wolf Animal Rescue in North Carolina, followed by $949,000 to Animal Care Centers of NYC. Many of the rest received $6,000 to $10,000.

This is not a new question

The criticism did not start with this watchdog. In August 2021, a CBS News investigation found that the ASPCA had raised more than $2 billion since 2008 but spent $146 million, about 7 percent of that total, on grants to local animal welfare groups. Over the same period it spent at least $421 million on fundraising, including more than $150 million paid to Eagle-Com Inc., a Canadian company that produced and placed its ads.

CBS also found that local SPCAs, which share the famous initials but are independent and unaffiliated, routinely heard from donors who assumed they were all one organization. In 2023, Fox News reported the watchdog’s earlier finding that grants to community pet shelters amounted to roughly 2 percent of the ASPCA budget, while the charity held $575 million in assets as of 2021.

The ASPCA’s side

The ASPCA rejects the framing. On its website it calls the Center for the Environment and Welfare a front group created by the public relations firm Berman and Company, and says the group was launched to oppose farm animal welfare reforms. “We are not a grant-making foundation or an umbrella organization,” the charity states.

The ASPCA says “approximately 74.6 cents of every dollar we spend advances the ASPCA’s mission,” based on its 2024 return, with 20.3 percent going to fundraising and 4.8 percent to administration. It points to a network of facilities beyond its Manhattan adoption center, including community veterinary and spay/neuter clinics in New York City, Miami and Los Angeles, a Behavioral Rehabilitation Center in Weaverville, North Carolina, a Cruelty Recovery Center in Ohio, a poison control hotline in Illinois, a forensic science center in Florida and an Equine Transition and Adoption Center in Oklahoma.

When CBS pressed it in 2021, the ASPCA said, “Any characterization that suggests all of our work is not in service of our mission is wrong.”

Those are fair points, and the motives of the watchdog’s funders are a legitimate thing to ask about. But the core figures are not the watchdog’s. They come from the ASPCA’s own sworn filing with the IRS, and no amount of messaging changes them.

What donors should take from it

The ASPCA is a legal, registered charity, and nothing in the record suggests otherwise. The issue is the gap between the pitch and the balance sheet. The ads show a shivering dog in a cage and ask viewers to help. Many viewers reasonably assume the money goes to the shelter down the street. It mostly does not. It funds a national organization with a large staff, a large media budget and an investment portfolio that keeps growing, while the watchdog counts 600,000 cats and dogs euthanized in 2024.

Donors who want their money to reach animals directly have a simple option: give to the local shelter or rescue whose kennels they can actually visit, and ask to see its numbers too.

A charity that banks nearly half a billion dollars while selling donors a picture of a cold puppy owes them a better explanation than a press release about its critics.

Editor’s note: This article covers figures from the ASPCA’s 2024 tax filing and a watchdog report published earlier in 2026 that drew renewed attention in September 2026.

Sources

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