Purple Reign

It’s the season of purple again. Signs and shirts are bathed in the hue, which is the official color of Relay For Life (RFL), the nationwide event that raises money for the American Cancer Society (ACS) and its efforts against cancer.

Tonight, Gonzales gets its annual dose that local volunteers spend months fundraising for. And perhaps your business has been asked to donate. Earlier this week, 86 sponsors had signed up, totaling $48,000 going to the Gonzales RFL branch.

It is expected that over 250 Gonzales County residents will gather at the J.B. Wells Show Barn for tonight’s Relay. Last year, 246 people participated and $101,218.86 was raised here.

And that’s just a small fraction of what comes into ACS coffers each year. In a national animated video distributed by ACS, it says that overall, $400 million was raised by 4 million volunteers to fight cancer.

The video asks, “How is Relay For Life making a difference in my community?” So, we thought to take a minute and see.

Without providing specifics, the video describes “Tim” and how he had his cancer diagnosis questions answered at 3 a.m. The video has a slide stating that “money raised at Relay helped answer 1 million requests for cancer information.”

Then “Mary” is featured, who was able to stay at a “Hope Lodge in a faraway city free of charge” during a cancer treatment. It says that patients saved $38 million in lodging costs last year. And “Sarah” received a ride to and from treatment, with “volunteers providing 380,000 rides last year alone.”

Another benefit touts money being used so that “little Mike can sit in a restaurant without exposure to cigarette smoke.” And “Jill” is taking a research drug that the ACS played a part in making happen. It says that $4 billion has been spent on research since 1946.

The piece concludes by listing a couple of statistics on how Relay dollars are spent for global research to prevent more deaths from cancer. Moreover, the dollars raised go up the fundraising ladder. But what comes down to the local community?  

A press release by the ACS’s regional community manager for the Gonzales County Relay, Stephen Bedsole, noted that 86 Gonzales County residents were diagnosed with cancer last year.

“The American Cancer Society provided services such as information about their diagnosis and treatments, Personal Health Managers, wigs and other gift items to patients living in Gonzales County,” the release stated. “These free services were made possible by the funds raised at Relay For Life.”

But that’s about as much detail that was provided on how dollars trickle back down into Gonzales County for cancer patients. RFL Event Team Leader Arline Rinehart Schacherl was able to confirm that money does not come back to county residents in the form of treatment, but she deferred to Bedsole for additional statistics.

Though Bedsole said that he would pass along better statistics on how Relay dollars benefited local patients, none were provided in the two weeks leading up to this article.

While the dollars spent at the local level for cancer patients cannot be tracked, the dollars spent on up the ACS chain can, in fact. Though the nonprofit is very transparent in how it spends its money, it is interesting to see where the money goes.

A recent report by leading charitable donation guide group CharityNavigator.org lays out numbers from the fiscal year 2014 from ACS. Net assets for ACS were over $1.2 billion. This includes over $358 million in contributions and $440 million from fundraising events. It also lists $840 million in total functional expenses. So almost 60 percent that is raised actually go toward what ACS intends it to.

Many have groused that ACS spends too much on overhead and large salaries for its leaders. Former CEO Donald Thomas was earning an annual salary of $1.4 million while its former National Vice President of Divisional Services William Barrem was making over $1.5 million. Current CEO John Selffrin takes home $863,304 annually before benefits.

And while Charity Navigator gives them a 97 percent rating on accountability and transparency, they dole out a meager 58.45 (out of 100) on their financial rating. That barely makes a passing grade overall for ACS.

Beyond that, others who have written much of their feelings on ACS criticize their fundraising efforts of several fronts. For instance, criticism is levied against ACS’s insistence on older, more dangerous forms of treatment rather than new or non-traditional methods. They also question ACS’s reliance of pharmaceutical medicines that often have ties to wealthy CEOs on corporate boards who also have business relations with ACS.

More recently, ACS has come under fire for not spending much on childhood cancer as some would like. The Huffington post reported that for every dollar ACS raised in 2010, only a penny was spent on childhood cancer. Considering the amount of children used in ACS advertising, this was seen as disingenuous from the organization.

People have even made issue with the RFL merchandise that is created by ACS. They feel that money spent on purple mugs and teddy bears would best be spent on prevention, research and childhood cancer cures.

There should be little debate on the overall mission and goodwill that participants of Relay For Life give to the event. From the survivors, patients, relatives and friends of those affected by cancer, this gathering is an annual healing spot for those.

And there can’t be anything wrong with funds being sent up the ladder for research and development for the greater good. But when millions of hard-raised dollars are spent on salaries, outdated medical thinking and feel-good merchandise rather than helping those with an incurable disease here at home, the color purple could easily be construed as green.