Hubris is a terrible thing. We
live in an age when overbearing pride is more common than humility.
That is part of what made yesterday’s post hard to write. I hate coming across as bragging. I don’t like being perceived as having a big ego. There are, as I said a few days ago, lots of people involved in making this organization work. And there are people working on this in other foundations who have accomplished far more than we have and have been at it a lot longer as well.
The researchers will ultimately be the ones who find the cure(s) for neuroendocrine cancer and carcinoid syndrome. Our job is to support those efforts both financially and psychologically. I want us to get to the point that no one doing real research on this cancer has to wonder whether there will be funding for what they need next year. We can be fairly certain that funding will not be coming from the government at this point. That means that groups creating private funding need to grow bigger and stronger in the years ahead.
But with great growth comes the danger of hubris. We’ve all seen that playing out with the Komen Foundation this year. I don’t care what your position on any social issue is–cancer needs to rise above the level of national–or even local–politics. What the board members of a foundation believe privately should not enter into the equation of what they are doing to fight cancer. Every decision needs to come down to, “does this maneuver further the goal of ending cancer?” If it does, then do it. If it doesn’t, then don’t.
If you like or don’t like something else, go set up a different foundation to deal with that. The legal charter of your foundation says what it is you are doing. As an organization, that is all you should be talking about: the things your charter says are your goals.
The American Cancer Society sometimes suffers from a different form of hubris. ACS’ great strength lies in the power of its grassroots. You can’t run Relay for Life–the largest single charitable fundraiser on the planet–without the volunteers at the community level. Sometimes it seems they forget this at the upper levels. Sometimes they see other charities as competition–as a threat to ACS’ existence.
We all need to remember what the goal is: raising money to defeat cancer. Money raised by one general cancer organization is, hopefully, going to the same purpose as money going to another general cancer organization. Some are more efficient at it than others–that is where the competition needs to be–and all of us need to do our homework to make sure who is doing the best job of that. Other organizations are focused on specific cancers–and we need to be aware of that as well.
But we all need to be trying to grow the pie, not fighting over our share of it.
I hope we can keep our focus on those kinds of issues. If I stray from that here, I want you to call me on it.
