Open to comment

[drwex]

http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/independent/pinkribbons/

Several of my friends are involved with SGK, or at least were until the blow-up over Planned Parenthood. I support my friends. Also, cancer sucks. Fuck cancer, really.

But when the woman in the trailer makes the comment about her disease not being pretty, not being sexy, and overall the idea that a life-threatening illness should not be someone else's marketing gimmick that really hits home with me. Exactly how big of a deal with which devils do we have to make?

Comments

[dcltdw]

I feel like this is just a subset of the general scrutiny that charitable organizations are coming under: is XYZ really about doing good work, or just promoting the XYZ brand? (E.g., United Way, SGK.) The Internet makes it easier to create "charities" that spend 80% of their fundraising on their internal operations and only 20% on their mission; likewise, the Internet makes it easier to find out about these scams and avoid them.

I'm pretty sure we don't have to make any deal with any devils on this one. If you want to fund cancer research, I suspect donating directly to Dana Farber Cancer Institute means you're not wasting your money. If you just want the t-shirt, sure, enter the walkathon or the race. (A lot of 5K races I enter are nominally fundraisers for charities. I tend to disbelieve unless the fine print actually says "100% of registration fees will be donated to Blahblahblah", because race logistics are not cheap. But some charities get businesses to donate money to cover race expenses, so yay them.) There's nothing wrong with wanting a t-shirt or having an experience, after all. But if someone is doing some high-profile event, I'm not donating because I think I'm fighting XYZ, I'm donating because I think, hey, this experience they'll have, that's a cool one, sure I'll support you.

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

Hm. I think it all somewhat depends. Like you can walk in Light the Night for free, but if you want a tee shirt and a balloon, please raise $100. I raised over $1000, and my team raised over $10,000 - that was some actual fundraising.

The 3day and such have a minimum fundraising of usually around $2K per walker, precisely because these logistics aren't cheap.

I liked what LtN did, though, b/c I was joining my company walking Race for the Cure for years before I realized it was possible to do associated fundraising -- in that case it seemed much more like slactivism than anything else.

And yes, Dana Farber is one of the very good ones. Have you read The Emperor of all Maladies?