Unhealthy Charities. - book reviews

Nutrition Health Review, Summer, 1994

Big health charities are better at scaring the public and raising money than helping cure disease or aiding disease victims, the authors claim. Their book accuses most huge fundraising organizations of serving their management rather than the needy.

"Of every thousand dollars spent in socalled charity today, it is possible that nine hundred and fifty dollars is unwisely spent -- so spent indeed, as to produce the very evil it hopes to mitigate or cure."

Andrew Carnegie, 1933

"Andrew Carnegie would be even more shocked at the money wasted by health charities today. More than $10 billion dollars in donations to health causes were contributed in 1990 to well known charities who have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on dubious or misleading lifestyle advice while accumulating wealth and slighting the constituency they were founded to help -- the poor," the authors, who are nonprofit expert researchers, complain.

"For every dollar spent by the American Cancer Society for research to cure cancer, American taxpayers pay $15. The American Lung Association spends a paltry 5% of its income on research, and the National Institutes of Health spend more than $10 for every dollar of research money spent by the American Heart Association," Bennett and DiLorenzo say.

Some of these health charities conduct public education programs that either scare or confuse the public. Often these reports are later challenged or withdrawn, we are reminded, because much of the advice is either common sense or practically worthless.

Six-figure salaries are commonplace for top health charities executives, and managers have wide latitude to use their organization to further their own financial interests, a charge that has found itself in the news columns of the daily press. (A startling example proved to be the charges filed against a Blue Cross executive in New York state.)

Salaries, fringe benefits, and payroll taxes typically account for 50% of the spending at state affiliates of major health charity organizations, the authors note from their recent investigations.

"Boards of directors are self-perpetuating and responsible to no one but themselves," the book emphasizes. This lowers their incentive to monitor the activities of the organizations they serve. The accumulation of wealth is a high priority... while relentlessly fundraising, the American Cancer Society held $361 million in cash and securities in August 1993, and more than 100 million in real estate and equipment, not including automobiles."

Just as this brief review of the book will shock many readers when they learn that these huge organizations, posing as benefactors to society, are accused of being inept and inadequate, imagine the feelings of millions of contributors and nonsalaried volunteer when confronted with such disturbing truths. Health charities are very big business. They receive numerous government privileges, the authors note critically. They also command an army of unpaid volunteers.

For the most part, they also enjoy a sterling reputation. But according to the investigators, there is a wide chasm between the rhetoric of fundraising and the reality of these programs. The authors state: "Much of the research spending by health charities is not aimed directly at finding the causes and cures for disease, but at helping favored researchers. obtain government grants.

"There is nothing inherently wrong," they write, "with such seed grants but donors are given the impression that their contributions are used for original research... their efforts may actually hinder rather than help progress in the war against disease."

In this well-documented book, the writers not only expose the woeful inadequacy of aid that these large charities give to the impoverished ill of our society but also venture to remind the organizations of their responsibility and offer advice for change that would ensure their efficiency and broaden their effectiveness.

"The major charities must return to their charitable roots," the writers suggest. They urge them to open their books to anyone investigating their spending and activities.