I’ll give you three guesses which cancer research charity with a three or four star Charity Navigator rating and over $100 million in donor income has the most efficient fundraising operation–and 99 percent of you will still probably get it wrong.
There are four things I look for when I want to donate to charity. The first is mission–I want to align what the charity is doing with what I want that money to accomplish. The second is the percentage of what the organization takes in that actually goes to what it claims is its mission. The third is how much gets tied up in administration. We’ll deal with all three of those in later parts of this series.
The fourth is the one we will deal with today: How efficient are you at raising money? If 90 percent of what you raise is spent on raising money–and at least one cancer charity I encountered this week does that poorly–then I m not really interested in whatever it is you are selling me elsewhere.
The top seven grossing cancer charities raised over $4.3 billion last year. Any of the top six beat number seven easily–but only one of them did it with nearly the efficiency of that seventh place finisher. And none of the other five really were in the same league.
In terms of total income last year the American Cancer Society nosed out the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital by less then $7 million–but neither was close to the top in terms of fundraising efficiency. In fact, among the 53 three and four star charities, ACS finished next to last with 22.2 percent of its money going to fundraising activities. It beat the Childhood Leukemia Foundation (26.3 percent) which raised just under $3 million last year. Both spent $0.25 on fundraising for every dollar they raised.
St. Jude has long been one of my favorite charities. I love the backstory. I love the way they have been on the cutting edge of children’s cancers for years. But they spent 16.9 percent on fundraising last year to finish eighth from the bottom among those 53 charities.
The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, which raised over $246 million last year to finish sixth in gross revenues, also finished sixth–but this time from the bottom–for the percentage of its revenues it spent on fundraising. The organization spent 17.6 percent of its income on fundraising.
The third most frugal fundraiser among those with more than $100 million raised was City of Hope. They spent 3.0 percent of their income on fundraising. That was good for eighth place overall.
The Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation did significantly better than either ACS or St. Jude’s with 9.8 percent going to raising money, but that was not enough to broach even the top 15 in terms of efficiency. They finished in the middle of the pack both overall and among the high revenue group.
The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute finished in a tie for fourth overall in fundraising efficiency in a photo finish. Dana-Farber had only 1.6 percent of its income going to fundraising expenses. This placed it second among the charities with more than $100 million in revenues.
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory ($132,495,402) finished first among the $100 million+ club. Most people have never heard of them.
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory is a purely research oriented organization. They treat no patients but do the kinds of basic research that make new treatments possible. Their head honcho pulls down $498,596. Administration costs are 9.9 percent and 88.3 percent gets spent on program expenses.
But Cold Spring Harbor finished behind two others overall.
The Jonsson Cancer Center Foundation raised just $9,345,091, but spent just one percent on fundraising. They spent $.01 for every dollar they raised. How could anyone beat that?
The people at the Minneapolis Medical Research Foundation found a way. They raised $26,649,107 and spent just 0.1 percent on fundraising.
(Next: Program Costs)
In a separate post I will list the 53 three and four star cancer charities I looked at in the order of their fundraising efficiency.
