Parachuting for Charity: A 5-year audit (1999)
Some years ago I organized some bridge* events for charity. It was as simple as selecting a worthy cause (a children’s hospital), signing an agreement that we were going to turn over the funds, collecting the funds, and handing them over.<p>These were a minuscule success, and I later thought that a “fun run” would be a good way to raise some money. I asked around about how to organize such things, and I was connected to a firm that organized these things as a service.<p>They took me to a nice lunch, which I thought was a bad sign. “Never buy anything in a room with a chandelier,” is the old saying, and while there was no chandelier in the restaurant, the metaphor was nevertheless on point.<p>When I finally got the actual details of how the run would operate, I realized that the firm’s fees would greatly exceed the amount of money that would end up going to the charity.<p>I speculate that the “market” for these services are people who want to buy some respectability. Had I gone though with the deal and the run was a success, everyone would think I was a nice person doing nice things for people in need, even if the actual numbers would show that I was a nice person doing nice things for a service company’s revenues.<p>N=1, of course, but I have had an extremely cynical view of charity events ever since. There appears to be an entire industry built around siphoning away 90%-99% of every dollar adjacent to charity.<p>———<p>* Bridge the card game, not the BASE-jumping location.