Updated: September 2012

2011-2012 Accomplishments

Consumer Action maintains a diverse staff in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Washington, DC. that collectively speaks 15 languages and/or dialects. In the past year, our staff:

• Filled 1,967 bulk orders from 1,135 community-based organizations around the country for 724,785 copies of our free multilingual publications.
• Traveled to 15 cities and trained 557 community group representatives across seven project initiatives.
• Granted $70,000 in mini-grants to community-based organizations in support of their financial literacy programs.
• Assisted nearly 8,500 individuals from all 50 states on a variety of consumer problems, with the top four areas of complaint being retail, automotive, credit/banking and phone/utility.
• Had more than one million (1,234,535) page views on the nine websites we have developed and maintain.
• Enabled 5,000 subscribers to send messages to their elected officials on a variety of topics, from financial reform to privacy issues.
• Participated in the legislative process on both the federal and state levels to promote pro-consumer policy, regulations and legislation.
• Participated as a member of 31 national and state coalitions that amplified the voice of consumers on issues ranging from clean and safe cars to the regulation of debt settlement companies.
• Enjoyed the support of 26 educational partners ranging from private foundations and financial institutions to law firms and government agencies.
• Received support from 20 corporations, one-fourth of which were Fortune 500 companies.
• Gave more than 100 in-language interviews to Chinese and Spanish television, radio and print news outlets on Internet safety, cell phone problems, senior scams, financial literacy, housing and mortgage issues, online banking, identity theft, health care issues and more.
• Partnered with the 7,500 community-based organizations that are members of our unique network to carry out consumer education and advocacy activities nationwide.