BBB dings them for “truthful materials”:
Details of BBB report below. After reading this, their reply sounds extremely weak to me. BS!
JOY does not meet this standard because:
In the Alliance’s opinion, the organization distributed solicitations in the past year that did not include a clear and prominent description of the charity’s programs or other pertinent facts.
The organization aired radio advertisements in 2012 that did not include any mention of organization’s programs. However, these ads repeated the charity’s phone number more than five times and included a request for car donations. Longer versions of the ad also offered a vacation voucher as a premium.
Sample e-mail appeals provided by the charity did not include a prominent and clear description of the charity’s programs. Specifically, the appeal includes a one-sentence description of JOY’s programs at the end of a paragraph that includes required government disclosures. The paragraph is in smaller type than the main copy of the appeal.
In addition, the one-sentence description in the mentioned appeal states that the organization “provides for spiritual, emotional and practical needs of Jewish children from impoverished or dysfunctional families” but does not clarify that the vast majority of the charities program activities are carried out through a grant to an affiliated organization: Oorah.
JOY also distributed email appeals that included a “Free Vacation Voucher,” but did not disclose on the appeal that the referenced vacation requires a $50 refundable deposit and optional participation in a timeshare presentation
In response to this finding, JOY stated, in part:
“Regarding our radio ads, you suggest that there is adequate time to include a short program description in the 30 or 60 seconds available to us. We are not averse to describing our programs. On the contrary, we wish we could give a full description of each of our programs; they are our strongest selling point...Yet we feel that our array of programs is just too extensive to condense into a one-line description. We have a full suite of youth development programs and family and community services that can hardly be lumped together in one generic statement.”