Where Is Your Donated Money Going?

By:Amy

In a world where billions of dollars are being circulated throughout our global capitalistic machine, working class to big time moguls are spending billions of dollars on cancer research that big surprise, ends up feeding the same machine. The number one reason when asked about why someone donates a dollar at the checkout counter or purchases a pink yogurt is because cancer has hit them personally. We all know someone who has died of or has suffered from cancer. It’s a cause that is so easy to get behind because it’s medically grounded. And if something is classified as a disease, it can’t be anyone’s fault. Therefore no one’s personal lifestyle feels threatened by giving to cancer, even if they’re puffing a cigarette.

In fact, it’s even easier to give your hard-earned dollar at the check-out counter when you’re giving for something everyone in our hyper-sexualized, MTV watching, a$$-and-tits-loving society loves-- boobs. Though it’s great that we can rally around a cause for women, how fitting that it centers around “saving the ta-tas”. So we can’t raise money simply to stop the painful suffering and financial burden that breast cancer causes to its victim and family but breast cancer awareness campaigns have to come up with catchy objectifying slogans such as "Save the Ta-tas" or "Save Second Base" or "Feel Your Boobies," to gain attention. Come on. Could we have sunken any lower as a people?

We, as cancer survivors, friends and family of cancer survivors, need to stand up against the exploitation of raising money “for the cure”- yeah I said it Susan G. Komen! So SUE ME! You’ve already done so to small non-profits throughout the country who are truly raising money for the cure of several different kinds of cancer. According to Laura Bassett’s Huffington Post article, Susan G. is suing “Kites for a Cure, Par for The Cure, Surfing for a Cure and Cupcakes for a Cure--and many of the organizations are too small and underfunded to hold their ground.” They’re even suing a non-profit run by a married couple in Minnesota called “Mush for the Cure” who holds an annual dog sledding race that has raised over $25,000! I think Stephen Colbert says it best during his "Tip of the Hat, Wag of the Finger" segment:

Tip/Wag: Susan G. Komen 'For The Cure' Foundation

Bassett also points out that almost a million dollars a year of donor funds are going towards these legal fees. Now that doesn’t sound like “every dollar raised is a bullet that can possibly be the one that kills cancer” as Dave, a husband of a breast cancer survivor so eloquently said.

And I’m not pointing the finger only at breast cancer foundations. The American Cancer Society has its own demons. According to Dr. Samuel Epstein’s article on the ACS published in the International Journal of Health Services, “Nationally, only 16 percent or less of all money raised is spent on direct services to cancer victims, like driving cancer patients from the hospital after chemotherapy and providing pain medication. Most of the funds raised by the ACS go to pay overhead, salaries, fringe benefits, and travel expenses of its national executives in Atlanta.” My thoughts drift to my husband’s stories of driving his mom to chemotherapy when he was 14 years old… so where do these funds go that everyone so diligently gives every year? How close are we to the cure?

Herein lies the problem that I addressed earlier. The only “women’s cause” that our populace can really rally around is to “Save Second Base”. Not that all breast cancer research supporters believe in this slogan, but the point is that it’s easier for people to get behind a medical cause because it doesn’t threaten their personal lifestyle. (When, if you look at diet, exercise and pollution- it should make you question your lifestyle.) My question is why is it so difficult to raise funds for the YWCA of South Hampton Roads which supports an emergency domestic violence shelter and the largest sexual assault counseling program in the state of Virginia. Why are millions of dollars being shoveled into huge disease-curing non-profits that don’t even spend the majority of their funds on the actual cause? How about the disease of society shutting its doors to screams of domestic violence and child abuse? One-third of all murdered women in the United States are killed by an intimate partner. That’s not a coincidence. So next time you think, “I’ll give a dollar to this giant charity that I don’t know exactly what its spending it on because I’ve had a personal experience with ___ disease,” just think- how many of you have been a victim of, witnessed or known a victim of domestic violence. Click here for a listing of Virginia’s domestic violence shelters. Click here to give to the YWCA of South Hampton Roads, who provided 15,336 nights of shelter to women and children in crisis. 4,613 youth, college students and adults received information through their Community Service programs. They have also provided 2,148 hours of crisis intervention on their 24 hour women’s helpline and answered 3,098 calls to their 24 hour rape Response hotline (www.ywca-shr.org). Everyone’s cause is important to them in different ways- be it saving the polar bears to curing diabetes. All I ask is that you figure out where your money is going before you give it.