I think the assumption that if ACS disappeared that all other charities would increase is incorrect. I'm sure they would increase, but not by the amount that ACS decreases. Unfortunately, convincing others to give money is a big part of being a charity. Hell, if it was easy enough that people just sent the money we wouldn't have had to have the tournament or the ridiculous prize support that went with it.

Note: I'm not saying this in favor of the ACS, just stating a point that cannot go without consideration.

Example: The ALS foundation, whatever it was, had its moment in the sun because of the ice bucket challenge. Their donations skyrocketed. Before and after that viral moment, their donations were significantly less.

Personally I think any employee of a charity making more than enough to be called upper class needs some massive justification. While I think the ACS is justified in much of its branding/outreach/marketing funds, that salary for the CEO is definitely something that makes me go "hmm...."

honestly, not to be aggressive, but merely disagreeing, I think you'd have to prove your point a little better for me to even start to believe part of it is right. For example, did the people who participate in CAC did so because of ACS? I didn't even know what ACS was before I looked into this. I think if CAC donated to any other cancer society people would have donated anyway.

In fact, at least one person in this thread said they would have donated more, except they saw it was ACS and so they donated less.

40% of donations is NOT going to the CEO's salary. According to your own charity navigator link, 6% of the donation goes to administrative expenses, which is pretty closely in line with what I see from other charities in a quick look. The other 34% you're so worried about goes to fundraising expenses. You know what they get as a result of those fundraisers? More money. Again, according to your own link, in 2014 ACS spent $289 million on fundraising expenses. You know how much they raised from fundraising events? $441 million. 441-289 means that the 34% spent on fundraiser raised an additional $152 million they wouldn't have had otherwise.

So if you spend $10 on ACS, going by the numbers from your link, *only* 6 of it goes directly to programs, but another $3.44 goes to fundraising which generates $5.25 as a result, which means your $10 actually resulted in *more* money raised.

With $338 million raised form contributions and donations in 2014, they actually spent $500 million on programs.

hey look, in 5 minutes I found a cancer charity with 81% of ACS revenue, that spends 97% of the donations on the actual people in need, while ACS spends 60%

and its CEO has a salary of $626,926. I present you the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer center. pick that one for CAC next year.

MEMORIAL SLOAN-KETTERING CANCER CENTER, money to program 97%, revenue $687,663,239

http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.profile&ein=131924236#.VwvYM6QrJaQ

You may want to read the link you provided. Yes, that's they money they received from donors, but most of their income is from government grants. Their efficiency IS NOT 97%.

Link you provided says:

Income Amount $1,177,764,432

...so I think you'll find your math is off.

In any case, you are also wrong about their CEO's salary. He is actually paid around the same as the ACS CEO:

At somewhere north of $2.2 million

SK isn't really even a charity in the same sense as those that are being compared to. They use lots of other money to assist in their fundraising and have significant infrastructure. Not an equal comparison.

Title pretty much makes your post not worth reading, the CAC hasn't done anything wrong. And making accusations like that does more harm than good. Chad and the CAC has done some amazing work and does deserve anyone thinking that he is preying on anyone - he isn't.

Yeah, yeah, the ACS could spend less on the admin side. That one figure doesn't tell you much about the effectiveness of the organization or the money they do put into research orgs, etc. So if you want to smear people based on one set of numbers then whatever. The CAC isn't the problem here like you are saying in your title. I hope you donated your $15 to your preferred organization then, because otherwise the non-admin portion of my entry is still doing more good than your $0 and accusations.

You could have done this a better and in a more positive way but your contrarian impulse won out I suppose.

yes CAC did one thing wrong: choose ACS as charity. my point is proven in the financial data I posted in the thread. I think if you had cancer and needed financial assistance you probably wouldn't be posting "yeah yeah" money is money. the Memorial above gave more money to cancer than ACS, even while bringing less revenue, because they aren't as inefficient/greedy as ACS.

I think the assumption that if ACS disappeared that all other charities would increase is incorrect. I'm sure they would increase, but not by the amount that ACS decreases. Unfortunately, convincing others to give money is a big part of being a charity. Hell, if it was easy enough that people just sent the money we wouldn't have had to have the tournament or the ridiculous prize support that went with it.

Note: I'm not saying this in favor of the ACS, just stating a point that cannot go without consideration.

Example: The ALS foundation, whatever it was, had its moment in the sun because of the ice bucket challenge. Their donations skyrocketed. Before and after that viral moment, their donations were significantly less.

Personally I think any employee of a charity making more than enough to be called upper class needs some massive justification. While I think the ACS is justified in much of its branding/outreach/marketing funds, that salary for the CEO is definitely something that makes me go "hmm...."

honestly, not to be aggressive, but merely disagreeing, I think you'd have to prove your point a little better for me to even start to believe part of it is right. For example, did the people who participate in CAC did so because of ACS? I didn't even know what ACS was before I looked into this. I think if CAC donated to any other cancer society people would have donated anyway.

In fact, at least one person in this thread said they would have donated more, except they saw it was ACS and so they donated less.

I can reasonably be sure that the ACS association was what helped get the challenge coins approved by LFL. Which definitely helped raise a bit extra cash.

40% of donations is NOT going to the CEO's salary. According to your own charity navigator link, 6% of the donation goes to administrative expenses, which is pretty closely in line with what I see from other charities in a quick look. The other 34% you're so worried about goes to fundraising expenses. You know what they get as a result of those fundraisers? More money. Again, according to your own link, in 2014 ACS spent $289 million on fundraising expenses. You know how much they raised from fundraising events? $441 million. 441-289 means that the 34% spent on fundraiser raised an additional $152 million they wouldn't have had otherwise.

So if you spend $10 on ACS, going by the numbers from your link, *only* 6 of it goes directly to programs, but another $3.44 goes to fundraising which generates $5.25 as a result, which means your $10 actually resulted in *more* money raised.

With $338 million raised form contributions and donations in 2014, they actually spent $500 million on programs.

hey look, in 5 minutes I found a cancer charity with 81% of ACS revenue, that spends 97% of the donations on the actual people in need, while ACS spends 60%

and its CEO has a salary of $626,926. I present you the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer center. pick that one for CAC next year.

MEMORIAL SLOAN-KETTERING CANCER CENTER, money to program 97%, revenue $687,663,239

http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.profile&ein=131924236#.VwvYM6QrJaQ

You may want to read the link you provided. Yes, that's they money they received from donors, but most of their income is from government grants. Their efficiency IS NOT 97%.

Link you provided says:

Income Amount $1,177,764,432

...so I think you'll find your math is off.

In any case, you are also wrong about their CEO's salary. He is actually paid around the same as the ACS CEO:

At somewhere north of $2.2 million

so what, there's a number of other charities that have higher efficiency than ACS. I did say I spent 5 minutes to research the Navigator. are you saying the ACS does not get gov. grants? I didn't even bother to mention that in addition to the 2.2 millions salary for the ACS CEO, he also had an undisclosed amount of retirement benefits. honestly I'm out of this thread. I said what I wanted to say.

Title pretty much makes your post not worth reading, the CAC hasn't done anything wrong. And making accusations like that does more harm than good. Chad and the CAC has done some amazing work and does deserve anyone thinking that he is preying on anyone - he isn't.

Yeah, yeah, the ACS could spend less on the admin side. That one figure doesn't tell you much about the effectiveness of the organization or the money they do put into research orgs, etc. So if you want to smear people based on one set of numbers then whatever. The CAC isn't the problem here like you are saying in your title. I hope you donated your $15 to your preferred organization then, because otherwise the non-admin portion of my entry is still doing more good than your $0 and accusations.

You could have done this a better and in a more positive way but your contrarian impulse won out I suppose.

yes CAC did one thing wrong: choose ACS as charity. my point is proven in the financial data I posted in the thread. I think if you had cancer and needed financial assistance you probably wouldn't be posting "yeah yeah" money is money. the Memorial above gave more money to cancer than ACS, even while bringing less revenue, because they aren't as inefficient/greedy as ACS.

Except it wasn't immoral. Or preying on anyone. CAC wasn't trying to perpetuate a fraud or wasn't benefiting in anyway from he choice of ACS. Your title implies that.

The "wrong" of choosing ACS is your subjective judgement about how an organization is run. It doesn't disqualify them as hucksters or invalidate their efforts to help anyone. You are just turning this into something it isn't with your clickbait title accusations. The branding of the CAC should not suffer because YOU don't like the way ACS uses the money. Why couldn't you have just been respectful to the effort and made a suggestion while bringing up your concerns? It's rude, the title is dishonest and harmful, and you are ignoring the good faith efforts by people to make a difference.

...

honestly, not to be aggressive, but merely disagreeing, I think you'd have to prove your point a little better for me to even start to believe part of it is right. For example, did the people who participate in CAC did so because of ACS? I didn't even know what ACS was before I looked into this. I think if CAC donated to any other cancer society people would have donated anyway.

In fact, at least one person in this thread said they would have donated more, except they saw it was ACS and so they donated less.

Sorry for the misunderstanding. In reference to the CAC, you are correct, for the people paying $15 to play some x-wing it would have been irrelevant what charity it was going to. There were also some people who gave more based solely on the fact that it was the ACS though I have no statistics on that.

I was speaking from a general overall organization standpoint. Maybe the CAC wouldn't have selected the ACS had they not heard about them in some way like marketing or whatever else.

Also Charity Navigator doesn't rate SK because they don't meet their criteria. Which is neither positive or negative according to them.

This organization is not eligible to be rated by Charity Navigator because, as a service for individual givers, we only rate organizations that depend on support from individual contributors and foundations. Organizations such as this, that get most of their revenue from the government or from program services, are therefore not eligible to be rated.

That is a very, very large assumption.

This is a good point. However, the OP point also remains. Now that you know, if you gave money, more would go to the people in need of it if you gave to the other charity.

That is a very, very large assumption.

This is a good point. However, the OP point also remains. Now that you know, if you gave money, more would go to the people in need of it if you gave to the other charity.

Has he proved his point? I still don't see clear evidence that ACS was a bad choice.

That is a very, very large assumption.

This is a good point. However, the OP point also remains. Now that you know, if you gave money, more would go to the people in need of it if you gave to the other charity.

Also pretty certain I would've given less, since I wouldn't have had a challenge coin to buy.

40% of donations is NOT going to the CEO's salary. According to your own charity navigator link, 6% of the donation goes to administrative expenses, which is pretty closely in line with what I see from other charities in a quick look. The other 34% you're so worried about goes to fundraising expenses. You know what they get as a result of those fundraisers? More money. Again, according to your own link, in 2014 ACS spent $289 million on fundraising expenses. You know how much they raised from fundraising events? $441 million. 441-289 means that the 34% spent on fundraiser raised an additional $152 million they wouldn't have had otherwise.

So if you spend $10 on ACS, going by the numbers from your link, *only* 6 of it goes directly to programs, but another $3.44 goes to fundraising which generates $5.25 as a result, which means your $10 actually resulted in *more* money raised.

With $338 million raised form contributions and donations in 2014, they actually spent $500 million on programs.

hey look, in 5 minutes I found a cancer charity with 81% of ACS revenue, that spends 97% of the donations on the actual people in need, while ACS spends 60%

and its CEO has a salary of $626,926. I present you the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer center. pick that one for CAC next year.

MEMORIAL SLOAN-KETTERING CANCER CENTER, money to program 97%, revenue $687,663,239

http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.profile&ein=131924236#.VwvYM6QrJaQ

https://www.charitywatch.org/ratingsandmetrics.php?charity_id=137

Breast Cancer Research Foundation, money to program 91.9%, $58,517,517

http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=5001

Cancer Research Institute, money to program 86.7%, total revenue $46,760,046:

http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=3417#.VwvXuaQrJaQ

ACS, money to program 59.5%, total revenue $840,201,383:

http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=6495#.VwvXt6QrJaQ

It's hard to use MSKCC to compare with the rest because charitynavigator doesn't give any breakdown of how the money is used like it does for the others. It just gives that one 97% number.

Cancer Research Institute lists that 86% of your contribution goes to program expenses. Yet looking at the 2014 numbers they gained $36 million from contributions and spent $22.5 million on program expenses, and ended the year with a $20 million excess (about 45% of the total revenue). They only spent 7.9% ($2 million) on fundraising, but only raised $3 million (less than 10% of the total contribution) from fundraisers.

ACS, as I said before before, spent $500 million on programs after getting $358 million from contributions, while the rest of that $860 million total came from the fundraisers they spent the other 34% on. Like I said, they spend more on programs than they get from contributions, so in my mind, that's a net positive, depsite "only" 60% of your money going to programs directly. I'm perfectly happy for some of my money to go to fundraising if it means they get more money overall. If they put 94% of your money toward programs after the administrative expenses with none of it going to fundraising, they'd have only had $336 million dollars to spend on programs. I fail to see how that's an improvement over what they did. Those fundraisers they spent the money on actually raised more money than contributions did. And compared to CRI, they only had a $22 million excess, which works out to about 2.5% of their total revenue.

Breast Cancer Research Foundation looks better, and actually spent more on programs than they raised total, though that also left them at an $8 million deficit for the year, which isn't sustainable long-term (I'm only looking at the 2014 numbres on those links, no idea what they've done long-term). That deficit makes it harder to compare, since it LOOKS like they're spending way more as a % of contributions on programs, but they're also spending more than they made, which eventually you run out of money and can't keep doing (the deficit amount was ~13.5% of the total contribution amount).

@VanderLegion - I somehow doubt you'll manage to convince Karl Marx, there, that sometimes you have to spend money in order to make more money.

As you are pointing out, it's obviously not a zero-sum game. More advertising that makes this charity more money isn't even necessarily going to pull money from other charities - people spend money on so many things. Maybe the higher advertising gets people to donate to this charity instead of their local PAC? Or donate to cancer research based on advertisements or campaigns they encounter when they would previously have donated nothing at all to any of them?

Administrative and overhead costs are NOT, inherently, evil - especially when they demonstrably earn more than they cost.

I can absolutely state that I give more than just the $15 donation specifically BECAUSE it is the ACS.

Jim

Lemmie just touch on a few points -

1) If I were the CEO of a non-profit, I'd be DISGUSTED with myself I brought home 2 million a year. People are dying and that kind of compensation is way outside of what I consider reasonable.

2) As far as the OP and the Title; maybe a poor choice of phrasing, but apparently the clickbait started a conversation...

3) I think that if you actually care about the purpose of CAC, you would be supportive of helping to raise as much as you can to go to fighting cancer. (If you just want to play X-Wing then this really doesn't apply to you so what are you even reading this for? Go read a tactics article or go to one of those goofy "how I would fix "X" "...'s) . I think the OP's heart is in the right place and honestly think that the best way to convince a non-profit to work harder to lean out it's bottom line is through moving your donations to organizations that already do that. Does ACS do a decent job? Sure! But there might be other places that we could put our money where it goes farther...That's all...

I can absolutely state that I give more than just the $15 donation specifically BECAUSE it is the ACS.

Jim

Good point. The trusted and big name means you can feel better giving more amounts.

Personally I think any employee of a charity making more than enough to be called upper class needs some massive justification. While I think the ACS is justified in much of its branding/outreach/marketing funds, that salary for the CEO is definitely something that makes me go "hmm...."

So you think all charitable organizations should be run with sub-standard employees in a market where CEOs demand high a salary? Should they also have crappy Infosec people when good Infosec people usually get 100k+?

Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center is a non-profit hospital, not a general purpose charitable organization. They do take general donations. They get a lot of government funding. They also provide billable medical procedures. They are an amazing organization. They are not directly comparable to ACS.

Your outrage at the CEO salary is out of hand. You seem to think that running an organization that size is simple, or does not deserve fair compensation. People with CEO level skills are worth money on that market. Without a competent CEO, any organization would be in trouble.

XBear keeps quoting a 2.2 million number, which looks like it may have been true at some point in the past. The latest number I can find for Seffrin's last year (before Reedy) is $934,301. That's 0.11% of their overall expenses or 1.85% of their administrative overhead. XBear keeps making it seem like it's 50% of the donations, when it's less than 1/8 of a percent.

I know I said I was out...but everyone arguing against a non-profit running like a public sector business I urge you to watch this talk by Dan Pallotta.

Activist and fundraiser Dan Pallotta calls out the double standard that drives our broken relationship to charities. Too many nonprofits, he says, are rewarded for how little they spend — not for what they get done. Instead of equating frugality with morality, he asks us to start rewarding charities for their big goals and big accomplishments (even if that comes with big expenses). In this bold talk, he says: Let's change the way we think about changing the world.

If you're going to be outraged by a charity wanting to pay individuals fair market value please, please take the time to watch this talk. You don't need to "equate frugality with morality".

Personally I think any employee of a charity making more than enough to be called upper class needs some massive justification. While I think the ACS is justified in much of its branding/outreach/marketing funds, that salary for the CEO is definitely something that makes me go "hmm...."

So you think all charitable organizations should be run with sub-standard employees in a market where CEOs demand high a salary? Should they also have crappy Infosec people when good Infosec people usually get 100k+?

Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center is a non-profit hospital, not a general purpose charitable organization. They do take general donations. They get a lot of government funding. They also provide billable medical procedures. They are an amazing organization. They are not directly comparable to ACS.

Your outrage at the CEO salary is out of hand. You seem to think that running an organization that size is simple, or does not deserve fair compensation. People with CEO level skills are worth money on that market. Without a competent CEO, any organization would be in trouble.

XBear keeps quoting a 2.2 million number, which looks like it may have been true at some point in the past. The latest number I can find for Seffrin's last year (before Reedy) is $934,301. That's 0.11% of their overall expenses or 1.85% of their administrative overhead. XBear keeps making it seem like it's 50% of the donations, when it's less than 1/8 of a percent.

Maybe outrage is an exaggeration for me. I'm not going all "Kylo Ren just lost his prisoner" about it. I just think a good justification needs to be made for that level of salary.

Yes you want to have a competent person on top, but I would like to think that someone would take a lower salary for the sake of helping people. Maybe I'm just hoping for the best in people. I make a fairly high salary as a software engineer. As a software volunteer for one organization and a vice president of 2 organizations (one that is a charity), I pull a $0 salary because it is a charity. Just out of the goodness of my heart. I would like to think they could find a competent CEO for $1 million or maybe less. $1 million per year isn't exactly a vow of poverty in the name of cancer research.

That's all I'm saying.

I think this is a great point of discussion and CAC seems open to it so yes, lets find a very efficient charity to use in the future.

This is a huge issue with charities and non-profits overall. Not surprisingly they have become a way for wealthy people to give themselves guaranteed jobs for life running their own charities on money they got to donate to themselves tax free and get tax deductions for. Yes, this is why Zuckerberg is looking into it. Not for the purpose of donating the money away to the needy.

I would like to think they could find a competent CEO for $1 million or maybe less. $1 million per year isn't exactly a vow of poverty in the name of cancer research.

That's all I'm saying.

Funny, that's exactly what they do. The last published statistics show ACS paying just a bit UNDER 1 million for their then CEO. They have not published the salary for the current CEO yet.