DEAR SUN SPOTS: Is SAVES a nonprofit organization? How much of donations go to the executives? What are their salaries? How much of donations go directly to help people?

Many towns are asked to contribute money to various nonprofit organizations. Shouldn’t they be required to reveal where the money goes since this is government money? — No Name, Farmington, via email

ANSWER: For those who are unaware of what SAVES is, it is one of three nonprofit agencies recently merged under a new name, Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Services.

In October, the Sun Journal reported the merger of the Sexual Assault Victims Emergency Services of Franklin County with the Rape Education and Crisis Hotline of Oxford County and the Sexual Assault Crisis Center of Androscoggin County.

Despite the merger, the agencies maintained their well-established names of SAVES, REACH and SACC. The merger does allow them to expand and share services.

These services include a confidential helpline 24 hours per day, 365 days per year; a sexual assault response team; on-site support in schools; community outreach; and support groups for victims of sexual assault.

For an answer to your question about finances, Sun Spots talked to Judy Rawlings, the SAVES coordinator for Franklin County, who provided the following numbers.

“Our total revenue for this fiscal year (10/1/11-9/30/12) is $252, 674. Our revenue includes federal funds ($153,280 or 60.5 percent of total); state funds ($63,858 or 25.3 percent of total); county funds ($11,380 or 4.5 percent of total); United Way of the Tri-Valley Area ($10,000 or 4 percent of total); Legal Aid for Victims grant ($4,821 or 1.9 percent); Maine Community Foundation grant ($7,500 or 2.9 percent of total); and donations ($1,835 or .7 percent of total).

“Salaries are paid for with federal, state, county, United Way and LAV grant funds and comprise 62.4 percent of our expenses. The services we provide — support advocacy and education — all require intensive staff time and commitment, hence the greater percentage of the expenses is incurred by our personnel expense. We use donations to help fund our client emergency fund and materials and supplies for educational presentations. Our occupancy expenses (rent, heat and electricity) are 4.4 percent of our total expenses.”

Residents certainly have the right to ask about the finances of any group that is requesting town funds. Most nonprofits are very conscientious about how they spend their limited funds. Interested readers can visit www.savesrapecrisis.org

DEAR SUN SPOTS: I would like to respond to the March 7 inquiry about Maine’s exclusion from the Transformation Nation contest on the very popular Dr. Oz show.

As the general manager of Weight Watchers of Maine Inc., a wholly independent franchise of Weight Watchers International, I was confronted with deciding to participate or not. It was an agonizing decision and made with much thought and consideration.

Participation required that all locations must open doors on specific dates to all people — members and nonmembers alike — to get an official starting weigh-in for the contest.

The official weigh-ins were scheduled to happen during times when membership is at its highest and when more new members sign up. It is the absolute worst time to invite many, many nonmembers to come get a free weigh-in so that they may participate in a national contest.

Maine only has three, full-time, full-service Weight Watchers centers (Auburn, Bangor and South Portland). We could easily accommodate the extra visitors to our meetings at our centers, but our other 38 meeting locations are in churches, clubs and municipal buildings. Many of them have limited parking, meeting room space and staffing.

Given these conditions and knowing that Dr. Oz is a very popular show, the concern was nonmembers coming to get their official weigh-ins would squeeze members out of their meetings.

That means our members (paying customers) would be standing in long lines because there would be nonmembers coming in on those specific weeks to get their free official weigh-in. That simply was not acceptable.

The conflict was created because there was no room for us as an independent franchise to alter or customize our participation, which is typically the case with Weight Watcher promotions and contests.

We could not limit nonmember weigh-ins to just locations where we had adequate space and staff to handle the potential crowds nor could we specify that only members could get official weigh-ins. Our only option was to be all the way “in” or all the way “out.”

At the time I made the decision not to participate, I understood that Maine residents could go out of state to get an official weigh-in. It wasn’t made known to me until after the start date of the promotion that residents of Maine were completely barred from entering.

I’d like to add that this national contest will only have one winner and who gets chosen as the winner is completely subjective to Dr. Oz and the producers of his program. The odds that the winner would be somebody from Maine are quite slim.

Weight Watchers of Maine is deeply committed to the health of the people of the state of Maine. Our meetings are always open to guests to come learn more about our services without obligation to join or purchase anything. — Jacquelyn Conn

This column is for you, our readers. It is for your questions and comments. There are only two rules: You must write to the column and sign your name (we won’t use it if you ask us not to). Please include your phone number. Letters will not be returned or answered by mail, and telephone calls will not be accepted. Your letters will appear as quickly as space allows. Address them to Sun Spots, P.O. Box 4400, Lewiston, ME 04243-4400. Inquiries can also be e-mailed to [email protected].