The Attorney General of the State of Minnesota announced today that it has filed a lawsuit against Minnesota Public Radio, alleging that MPR's public statements about the organization's policy regarding the use of member names is misleading.

This lawsuit turns principally on the meaning of the word "occasional." We are surprised that the Attorney General thinks that that definition is worth litigating over.

Why this needs to be a lawsuit is beyond our understanding - but having come up dry in their examination of our practices relating to political list exchanges and relating to our management of donor consent, the Attorney General is left only with attacking our forthrightness in telling our donors not whether, but how and how often we exchange their names.

The Attorney General believes that when we tell our members that we "occasionally" exchange their names, we are being misleading. Our analysis, based on the data we provided the Attorney General, is that we exchanged the name of an individual donor an average of approximately six times a year over the past five years - which in our lexicon is "occasional."

MPR engages in list exchange practices which comply with professional and ethical standards, and are consistent with the practices of virtually every other nonprofit organization in Minnesota with an active mail-based fundraising program.

Minnesotans are generous to their nonprofit organizations, and the organizations - including MPR - are careful to treat their donors with the utmost respect and care.

In conformity with the law and with good fundraising practices, MPR informs its donors that it exchanges their names with other organizations, and provides to its donors an opportunity to withdraw their names from those exchanges.

The strength of MPR's radio network is built upon membership, the single most important source of operating support for the organization. List exchange is fundamental to MPR's mail-based fundraising program. A strong and effective mail-based program enables MPR to keep to a minimum the number of days which it spends doing on-air fundraisers. It also provides an opportunity to other Minnesota charities to communicate with MPR's members for their own fundraising.

MPR does not believe that its fundraising practices amount to misrepresentation, and it intends to vigorously defend against the Attorney General's lawsuit.