Like most people, I have donated to my fair share of charities, and have also (in a professional capacity) provided legal advice to a couple. I must admit, however, that I haven’t paid a great deal of attention to ‘the charitable sector’ the way some people do. Of course, I’ve periodically heard dark rumours that such-and-such charity pays its CEO a small fortune and spends an enormous sum of money on marketing rather than research, and I’m broadly aware that there are serious problems with much overseas aid (to the point where just turning up and giving people money is often more effective).
However — this week — it became impossible not to notice when a charitable sector stoush burst its banks and the water started lapping around our ankles. I’m talking, of course, of the Planned Parenthood v Susan G Komen for the Cure ongoing blow-up. The former is a traditional, old-style and slightly fusty charity. The latter is what I’m going to call a new-style ‘novelty’ charity. Australia’s equivalent is the Jane McGrath foundation. The novel similarity? The pinkification of breast cancer. Pink ribbons, pink clothing, pink bat grips (!), you name it. Now the novelty factor may be a good thing, and isn’t confined to breast cancer charities. Who among our male readers has participated in Movember? I know I’ve donated to chaps who have, and it’s always fun watching the lads cultivate handlebars that would do Merv Hughes proud as they get around the office during November. The novelty element, combined with wit and compassion, encourages people to put their hands in their pockets.
However, there is a danger: it would appear that the eye-catching novelty factor can become an end-in-itself, meaning that a donation to an old-style, been around since forever fusty charity may buy you more bang for your charity buck.
The Hoydens have a post up on a Canadian documentary, Pink Ribbons, Inc, that details this sort of triumph of marketing over research. Tigtog makes the following oberervation:
The pinkification of cancer fundraising and pinkwashing globally diverts generous people’s donations away from the organisations doing most of the work towards organisations who are just better at marketing. Does this sound like the best use of donors’ money? Meanwhile the corporations get a huge PR boost for donating cents per sale when going pink generates megabuck boosts in their revenues.
And what about all the non-pinkified cancers? By dominating the cancer fundraising landscape, pink ribbons divert attention and thus donations (and the research/screening/treatment those donations provide) from other cancers which affect just as many people. Compassion fatigue sets in when potential donors feel that they’ve already “done their bit for cancer” with pink ribbon campaigns and hardly pay attention to other cancer fundraisers.
Those who donate their time and money for causes they believe in deserve better than having their generosity exploited by organisations and corporations who donate far less than their publicity would have you think. It’s not just Komen in the US who does this – they’ve been so successful that they’re copied all around the world.
Does this mean all ‘novelty’ charities are likely to give your donation to the CEO or spend megabucks on advertising? No, of course not. It does mean, however — when it comes to charities aiming for the ‘cutesy’ factor — that we need to keep our wits about us. The RSPCA, or Queensland Cancer Council — you know the type — may be less fun to look at, but may actually help more people (and animals, in the case of the former).
On the chit-chat front, I’ve got a great deal on this weekend so won’t be around much over the next couple of days, so please feel free to natter away in the comments and put up links to things that take your fancy.
12 Comments
It’s difficult to evaluate charities.
Quite a few in Australia use an organisation that solicits signups in the streets, asking for regular donations over three years. The first year’s donations go to the fundraising business.
Also, several of the cancer councils spend much or most of their money on “education” rather than research – mostly ads to encourage us to wear hats and sunscreen.
OK, I guess, but I’d rather my money go to research rather than what I consider nagging.
Background reading on the stoush SL refers to is here and the WSJ take is here. Up front I admit I’ve not read a lot about this, but I did find interesting one comment in the WSJ remarking upon The Times view to the effect that “The Times’s view exemplifies feminism’s gradual transformation into a totalitarian ideology. Totalitarianism politicizes everything, so that neutrality is betrayal–in this case, neutrality on abortion is portrayed as opposition to women’s health.”
Leaving aside the ongoing US political fascination with abortion as a major issue, I’m inclined to tentatively widen the comment from feminism to pretty much any area of discussion: these days it seems almost impossible to adopt a position of neutrality on any subject, without one ‘side’ or the other calling your motives into question.
In most things there are irreconcilable ‘greys’ rather than just black and white. It used to be possible to point this out without the legitimacy of your parents’ marital status being called into question.
Quote of the year.
Ken, yes, I now refuse to give to charities which nag me in the street or phone me at home. I’m happy to give but not to be nagged. I suspect that much of the money I had given in the past goes to the street naggers or phone naggers, not to the worthy cause. It is very hard to evaluate, though. What if I am withholding money from a worthy cause? Stress, stress.
Lets have a little think more on “context”. KVD, sorry haven’t read your linx yet, perhaps they confirm the real reason for Komen’s defunding of FamilyPlanning. Hint, the clue comes in the name of the defunded organistion, Family Planning. Yep. Little to do with pink ribbons, much more to do with the astroturfing of the Komen board by Fundamentalists opposed to, you guessed it, “family planning”!
So, some may say, it’s just an organisation and its business.
Except, that right across the US political spectrum, there has been a concerted, intensifying campaign involving many organisations, to roll back and bury the hated reform liberalism of the previous sixty years. In short it is a species of Tparty-ism, not just grassroots, but extensively funded by some of the richest people in the world, including the notorious John Birchers, the Koch brothers, of gas fracking notoriety. If you can fund enough of a Tparty caucus in congress, in return you will have a rump amenable to the return of favours in the form of less enviro management and legitimisation of Wall St Banking practices involving confidentiality, tax dodging, bailouts etc.
What we see is not a naive form of libertarianism at work, but full-on corporatism close to acheiving its goals at the expense of democracy.
Planned Parenthood spends very little on abortions:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/what-planned-parenthood-actually-does/2011/04/06/AFhBPa2C_blog.html
Most women who want an abortion got to a specialist abortion provider. The Komen money at Planned Parenthood paid for poor women to get breast cancer screening. It will do so again as Komen, having painted themselves into a corner, are now getting sticky feet extricating themselves from said corner.
The street collectors are called ‘chuggers’ (‘charity muggers’, so I understand).
They are very disturbing.
“Chuggers.” I like it. When I meet a chugger, I practice my “camel look”(a look taught to me by an Egyptian friend (originally to avoid postcard sellers). Instructions: look grumpy, look straight ahead, do not meet chugger’s eye.
Don’t get me wrong, I give to various charities, but on my terms and to whom I choose, not because I have been pressured into it. I abhor being pressured into stuff.
Planned Parenthood may not spend much on abortions because they are actually a profit centre for them. They are the largest provider in the US performing over 300,000 each year.
They also arrange a few hundred adoptions.
It isn’t unreasonable for SGK to remove the fairly small funding given the unpopularity of abortion in the US (it is not correct to say it is ‘astroturf’). The response pretty well proves that PP is not a ‘women’s health’ concern since it was aimed at damaging a charity that was actually focussed on women’s health.
I also think it is stretching things to claim that abortion on demand is a ‘liberal reform’, given it is used to selectively abort female babies.
PW, the ‘astroturfing’ of Komen? By, perhaps, Susan G Komen?
Astroturfing sounds cool to lefties, I get it. Lots of association with nasty companies ‘n’all. But in politics it happens mainly on the left, in union-organised events, lame-ass anti-tea-party rallies and the like.
When an organisation does something that its members (or for that matter founder) passionately believe in, it isn’t astroturfing.
Yes Patrick. The problem at Komen centres around a vice president, Karen Handel, a hard core Republican conservative politician and right-to lifer, apparently on a $5 million a year salary, who seeks for ideological and propaganda reasons, to disaffiliate Planned Parenthood and Komen. Like I said before, the clue is in the name.
The clue is in the name? Which? Isn’t Komen an evangelical Christian? What is your general impression of evangelical Christian views on abortion?
For all justice loving Australians Piers Ackerman had an article yesterday about the long running Heiner affair
http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/piersakerman/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/senators_receive_heiner_allegations/P20/
A bit of cut and paste
Meticulously prepared allegations of the most serious misconduct by some of the nation’s most senior public officers, including the Governor General Quentin Bryce, the Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd, and a raft of Queensland jurists have been received by every member of the Senate.
The allegations were contained in the Rofe Audit of the long-running Heiner Affair and e-mailed to every Senator on Australia Day.
Please take the time to read and e mail your Senator asking what he/she intends to do
For more background here’s the heiner affair website http://www.heineraffair.info/
One Trackback
[...] Charity Wars and weekend chit-chat from Skepticlawyer [...]