Spending Money to Make Money

That can be understood to a certain degree. The Canadian Cancer Society probably qualifies as one of the oldest-existing health charities within Canada. There was a time when it depended largely on volunteers agreeing to canvass door-to-door for charitable donations from householders.

I can recall fifty years ago as a young housewife being canvassed at the first house we owned. And it might have been twenty years or less later when I began canvassing myself for them.

Legions of Canadians have gone out year after year every April, designated as "Cancer month", when public awareness is heightened by public relations campaigns and advertising, and when people anticipate being canvassed, many welcoming the presence of people at their doorstep, inviting donations.

For decades now, the Canadian Cancer Society like many other similar groups, has turned to professional fundraisers.

They've also launched high-profile events selling $100 tickets giving people a chance at winning big-ticket prizes like homes, cottages, vehicles, boats, exotic vacations. And with the advent of the Internet have appealed to donors through that resource. Little wonder that their campaign which incorporates so many different fund-raising elements enables them to collect hundreds of millions in charitable donations.

For the Canadian Cancer Society, total revenue through fund-raising in 2011 came to $233-million. A whopping increase over the $102-million total raised in 1999. People in their 70s and 80s are still committed to going out into their neighbourhoods, knocking on doors to solicit funds for the yearly canvass, myself included.

Now it has been revealed that a relatively small proportion of the funds raised are being spent on cancer research. Dr. Brian Lichty, a cancer researcher at McMaster University in Hamilton took it upon himself to analyze the charity's financial statements. He did this in the wake of the Cancer Society's decision to cancel its annual research funding competition, launching a new program for short-term, non-renewable grants.

He discovered that while revenue has more than doubled over the past decade, the research budget has remained flat. "There's been this dramatic increase in how much money they're spending every year [it] just keeps marching up and up and this hasn't transferred into the envelope for research."

The Cancer Society does spend money on palliative care, patient support, colon cancer screening and other medical-ameliorative initiatives to benefit the public. But this has always been part of their mandate, along with education and the funding of cancer-related research. What appears to have changed the most is that spending has increased on fundraising and administrative costs.

An analysis conducted by the CBC's Marketplace pointed to the fact that the proportion of funding spend on research has dropped to just under 22% in 2011 from $40.3% in 1999, of charitable revenues collected. Moreover, researchers are puzzled that only 18% of research grants were found to have been accepted in the latest competition, a sizeable drop from past years.

"That's an 82% failure rate. I review these grants for the Society. We see lots of great proposals, things we would really love to be able to fund, but there isn't enough money", explained Dr. Lichty.

It would be interesting to know how much charities waste in their advertising schemes, from sending unwanted packets of greeting cards, address labels, holiday wrappings to potential donors through the post. Along with quarterly solicitations for donations from donation-weary supporters, as well.

Seems that more than ever, charity has become a business, one that feeds on itself, and is more concerned with establishing itself as a corporate-interest entity, hiring more staff, building more suitable office accommodations, investing in more advertising, and scooping up ever more public donations.

Not what most donors and certainly most volunteers envision.