"In this sticky web that we're all in, behaving decently is no small task." -- Novelist Stacey D'Erasmo

Monday, June 20, 2011

The Cancer Millionaires

     Two weekends ago I took part in the American Cancer Society's Relay for Life. As I reported in "We Walked to Fight Cancer," I was very gratified to be a part of our town's contribution to the cause of conquering cancer. In the end, we raised more than $100,000.

     Our town is only one of some 5000 communities around the U. S. to sponsor a Relay for Life. The very next weekend the town next door to us held their Relay for Life, and I saw that the town of Ridgefield, over the line in Connecticut, held theirs as well. Ridgefield is a little bigger than my town, and a little richer, and the people in Ridgefield raised something in the order of $200,000.

     We're raising a lot of money to fight cancer.

     I happened to be in Ridgefield last week, and I picked up a copy of the local newspaper. I saw an editorial by a doctor who writes a weekly column. (The article should be here soon -- but the paper has a delay in posting to its internet site.) The doctor, Dr. Evan Levine, complained that when he recently had gone to the grocery store with a friend of his, they were accosted by a young woman asking them to buy a $1 raffle ticket -- proceeds to go to Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. They were told the money would help children with cancer and fund research that might cure cancer. His friend immediately bought five tickets. The doctor reluctantly bought one, just to avoid any embarrassing situation.

     But Dr. Levine wrote that he really didn't want to buy a ticket to benefit Sloan-Kettering. Why? Because he's cold-hearted? No, because he had recently read that in 2009 the president of Sloan-Kettering took home a salary of over $4.4 million a year. The top five executives of Sloan-Kettering had pulled in almost $20 million for the year.

     Dr. Levine thought that was a lot of raffle tickets. Too many raffle tickets. And he wondered if the executives at Sloan-Kettering were sending kids out "to beg for money for the sick and needy, or for the fat and wealthy."

     "I think the execs at Sloan-Kettering are undeserving, overcompensated gluttons," he wrote. "Someone should demand that their salaries be lowered out of the stratosphere." He pointed out that if the top executives of this nonprofit organization satisfied themselves with only $1 million a year, then an extra $15 million would be available to help the poor children, and to help fund research to find a cure.

     Reading this column gave me pause. And I wondered if by participating in Relay for Life I had just been suckered into helping raise money not for kids, or a cure for cancer, but for executives who were enriching themselves in the name of a not-for-profit organization, and at the expense of poor children with cancer, women suffering from breast cancer and others facing this dreaded disease.

     I went on the Internet and did a little research on the American Cancer Society. I found one long multi-part article entitled: "The American Cancer Society Runs with the Money and Away from the Cure." It castigated the American Cancer Society (ACS) for being in bed with the chemical companies and the pharmaceutical companies, for pushing mammograms which may do more harm than good, and for failing to find a cure for cancer even though they've been collecting money and building a "bloated cancer industry" for over 40 years. The article also charged that the American Cancer Society "pleads poverty, [but] actually takes in more money than any other US charity," and it claimed that "high-ranking officers of the American Cancer Society were making as much as a million dollars a year."

     Of course, I realize that the American Cancer Society is not the same as the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and that apparently the American Cancer Society is, in fact, taking the Ridgefield doctor's advice -- paying its top administrators about $1 million a year, instead of $4 million a year. And just maybe the ACS ought to be coordinating with pharmaceutical companies that produce cancer drugs -- and are mammograms all that bad? The article may have made some good points; but it clearly had an ax to grind.

     I found the Charity Navigator, an organization that evaluates American charities, and saw that it awards the American Cancer Society three out of four stars -- a decent but not top-notch rating. Approximately 70 percent of the ACS budget goes to actual program activities, while 30 percent goes to administrative expenses and fundraising overhead. I also found that the American Cancer Society is not the richest American charity, as the critical article claimed. The richest is the American Red Cross. ACS comes in at number 5.

     Among the various activities of the American Cancer Society, apparently the Relay for Life rates as one of its more efficient fundraisers -- partly because a lot of the fundraising expenses (such as food, drink, shelter and entertainment) are borne by the volunteers themselves. Anyway, the popular overnight event only spends about 8 cents of every dollar on overhead.

     That's as much as I know. I can't pretend to have made a full-scale investigation of charitable giving in America, or the American Cancer Society, or the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. All I can say is that, as potential donors, we should probably be somewhat careful about where we make our charitable contributions. Because I, for one, want my dollars to actually go toward a cure for cancer and to help unfortunate kids, and not to bloat the salary of fat-cat administrators who are lining their own pockets in the name of charity.

     I will most likely walk in the Relay for Life next year, because it does seem to be a worthwhile activity of a better-than-average charity. But as far as Sloan-Kettering goes, well, I think $4.4 million is too much to pay out in one salary. Don't you?


13 comments:

Sally Wessely said...

You gave us much to think about and to research.

Dr. Kathy McCoy said...

A very thought-provoking post! I'm shocked and disgusted to hear about Sloan-Kettering and other charities/causes that pay executives seven figure salaries. I'm going to do more research and be very careful about where I contribute.

Margie said...

I did some research on the Canadian Alzheimer's Society. According to their website, in 2010 they took in about $10 million from public donations. They spent $2.9 million on research funding, $1.8 million on public education, $3.6 million on fundraising and $1.2 million on general, administrative, board and committee. I think it is important to research all charities to see where their donations go.

Kay Dennison said...

Thank you for this. I try to be careful where my meager donations go. And yeah, I think $4 million is a *lot* of money (read: too much) for anyone's salary.

Robert the Skeptic said...

I find it more rewarding, less costly and more effective to volunteer my TIME to a charity than to hand it money.

Nance said...

I have a friend, who is a cancer survivor and savvy consumer, who despises most of the cancer research heavies, stating that they line their pockets with our donations. While she's known to come out swinging hard for her opinions, I give this opinion some credence because I know how thoroughly she does her homework.

And that gave me pause, too.

Adam said...

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schmidleysscribblins.wordpress.com said...

I was all set to read a positive post and then the salaries of the Sloan-Kettering executives hit me between the eyes. I do not understand how anyone can take home a salary like this in good conscience. Honestly I don't. Dianne

Anonymous said...

My mother dies at Sloan Kettering and I can not tell you how much I hate and despise that hospital!!!! Talk about a money making machine. My mother was a living skeleton, barely 65 pounds left onher bones, and this guy came into her room with a derrick, to hoist my mother's body into the air, just to weigh her for her meds. IT WAS DISGUSTING WHAT THEY DID TO HER! I'll never forget it!

I told the guy immediately to stop mistreating my mothers body like that. WTF was the point of giving a woman, near deaths door a fuc***! pill for. PLUS, all of the nurses were outside her door, at the nurse station, and they spent most of their time laughing and carrying on. It got so bad once, that I had to go and tell them to shut up! They were on the death weard for God's sake, people and families inside the rooms were crying and praying and those creepy morons were laughing and telling jokes.

I'll never, ever forget the horrors I saw while inside Sloan Kettering! MY mother spent her final 5 days there in 1978 and when she died, we got a bill for $110,000!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In 1978.

I can only imagine what the costs are now.

Do not mention this hospital name to me in my presence. And do not ever, ever send them a dime. They are bastards. And this is my honest opinion, which I am entitled to. This was my experience with them. It was awfu, tragic, disgusting and back in 1978 they were just a money making machine, in my honest opinion. I doubt they have changed much.

Anonymous said...

sorry for the misspelled words, but that's how riled up i get whenever sloan kettering is mentioned to me. still, to this day in 2011.

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