Invisible Children’s financial statements are online for everyone to see. The organization only spent 16.24% on administration and management costs in FY2011. Financial statements from the last 5 years, including our 990, are available at
www.invisiblechildren.com/financials Charity Navigator gives our programs its highest rating of 4 stars. Our Accountability and Transparency score is currently at 2 stars due to the fact that Invisible Children currently does not have five independent voting members on our board of directors. We are currently in the process of interviewing potential board members, and our goal is to add an additional independent member this year in order to regain our 4-star rating by 2013. We are aware of this and trying to fix it.
Part of Invisible Children’s mission is advocacy, and we lobby within our 501(c)3 status. We have lobbied Congress on multiple occasions, but especially in 2009 and 2010 which led to the passage of the LRA Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act (
http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-s1067/text). We lobby all members of Congress, regardless of party affiliation. We do not endorse a political party.
Invisible Children has long advocated for a peaceful end to this conflict. We strongly advocated for the success of the Juba Peace Talks in 2006-2008. Joseph Kony failed to show up to sign the Final Peace Agreement on multiple occasions. We still hope that Kony and the top LRA commanders will surrender peacefully, even though peace talks don't seem to be a viable option at this point.
http://www.enoughproject.org/blogs/peace-talks-lra-are-unrealistic-now The LRA left northern Uganda in 2006. The LRA is currently active in Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, and South Sudan. Invisible Children’s mission is to stop Joseph Kony and the LRA wherever they are and help rehabilitate LRA-affected communities. The Ugandan government’s army, the UPDF, is more organized and better equipped than that of any of the other affected countries (DRC, South Sudan, CAR) to track down Joseph Kony. Part of the US strategy to stop Kony is to encourage cooperation between the governments and armies of the 4 LRA-affected countries. The LRA was active in Uganda for nearly 20 years, displacing 1.7 million people and abducting at least 30,000 children. The people and government of Uganda have a vested interested in seeing him stopped.
We do not defend any of the human rights abuses perpetrated by the Ugandan government or the Ugandan army. None of the money donated through Invisible Children ever goes to the government of Uganda. Yet the only feasible and proper way to stop Kony and protect the civilians he targets is to coordinate efforts with regional governments.
Invisible Children wants people around the world to participate in KONY 2012. Unfortunately we currently only have the financial and human resources to coordinate events within the U.S. We hope that activists around the world will take up the charge and spearhead efforts within their own communities. We have already heard many reports of international activists sharing the film, putting up posters, and asking their governments to take action.