The SGK foundation is a sham in my opinion.

You have to pay to collect money for them.

If you do not collect enough money for them, you pay with your own money.

The bulk of their funds go to "awareness", not research, or treatment.

They spent more on fundraising than they did on actual treatment. Almost twice as much.

Collections went up significantly in 2010 from 2009, roughly $76 million. Money spent on treatment decreased.

I hope it does some people some good, but this latest issue, along with the past running of the charity, 19% went for fundraising and administration, kind of turns me off a bit. Also, the fact that the quality and detail of their financial statement in their annual report lacks the depth and breadth of the statements provided by the Red Cross leads me to believe that they really don't want you to see exactly what they spend their money on.

SGKF's annual report is pink and has 2 pages discussing financials. It looks pretty. The Red Cross financial statements go into detail, minute detail, and include the independant auditors discussion on the financials of the organization. The Red Cross's statements are in black & white.

I wouldn't walk 3 feet for the SGK foundation, let alone 3 days.

The whole organization is a disgrace.

Good information Dogfish. I hadn't thought about that, and have a number of friends who have SGK high on their giving list. Wasn't on my list, and now it won't be. A few years ago I learned of one or two websites that evaluate charities on how they use their money, and it's made a difference on where I send my charity contributions.

Sg

Like I said on the other thread their only hope for survival was to cut out the far right cancer from their midst but I think it's too late.

I was a little bit heated regarding SGK last week and it prompted some research thus I can say you're absolutely right about the lack of transparency on their annual report and published financials. I had to log in to Guidestar through a work account to find what I was looking for and that in it's self was a red flag. 990's should be readily available.



Per their most recent 990, 22% went to admin and fundraising w/ a VP of development taking home over 400k per year.

Unfortunately, that kind of overhead is not uncommon. Wounded Warrior Project, one of the new 'it' charities,(I'm wondering when I can get a camo stand mixer from Kitchen Aid, btw) has an overhead of about 35%.

I used to contribute annually to SGK, and play in pretty spendy charity golf tourney they had until I learned more about what they do ( and dont do) Now I am in the same camp as the rest of you who say "No Thanks"

I liken them to Public School district Admnistrative boards paying themselves hefty salaries to "Help" design programs to help kids learn, but in actuality the operational costs of their "administration" of the school district ultimately diverts far too much money from those which they are chartered to help in the first place!

Sadly, this scenario is typical within many parts of America these days.

There are hundreds of organizations actually doing cancer research. If you want to give, just cut out the middle men and write a check to the research organization of your choice. Here in Seattle we have many great research organizations to choose from.

Fred Hutchinson
Benaroya research Institute
U of W
Seattle Biomedical Research Institute
And at the VA Hospital there is Seattle Institute for Biomedical Research
Are all excellent

Just goggle the type of research you want to support and you will find many worthy groups.

I would caution not to get too hung up on what percentage they spend on administration. That number can very easily be manipulated. For example. Some organizations consider rent to be an administrative cost; others charge the grants directly for rent. Total rent cost is the same but in the former the administrative cost rate would be much higher than the other.

Another consideration is depreciation. Research requires some very expensive equipment. One of my clients has a microscope that cost more than $2,000,000. Annual depreciation and maintained on just that one microscope can exceed $200,000 per year. In most instances that cost is considered a cost of administration.