The #ALSicebucketchallenge Charity Envy Epidemic
The success of the ALS ice bucket challenge has been phenomenal. I can only imagine being in the ALSA offices and watching the bank account grow daily. Let alone the amazing feeling of awareness growing for the cause you’re so passionate about. I know I have certainly been moved by the videos showing the struggle that victims of ALS go through just to make it through the day. I have also noticed a surge of what I’ll call “Charity Envy”. As far as I can tell, that’s not an actual term, so I’ll attempt to define it.
Charity Envy: when people become upset that one charity is raising a lot of money and awareness instead of the charity they are passionate about.
As the President of a nonprofit organization that fights for childhood cancer awareness, I’m a prime candidate to catch Charity Envy, and I can assure you I have shown some symptoms. The first thing that pops into your mind is “Man, I wish people were doing that for <insert cause here>!” Then you start to wonder “What could we have people do for <insert cause here> that would go viral like that?” For example, I know some folks are working on trying to make a whipped cream pie to the face challenge go viral for childhood cancer.
Some people get annoyed. Some people get upset. I’ve seen plenty of remarks about millions of people wasting clean water when millions of people die from lack of access to clean water. Some folks in California are #draughtshaming people for wasting water during a dry spell. Other people are upset about the way the ALSA spends their money and that the CEO makes $300k per year in salary. Some have questioned the ethics of ALS research when it involved stem cells or animal testing. The list goes on.
A dangerous argument I have seen is that ALS “only” affects 5,600 people in the US every year and that the money should go to a “bigger” problem.
At Beat Cancer Today, we have fought for over 5 years to bring attention and awareness to a disease that “only” affects about 13,500 children every year in the US. By that argument, we shouldn’t be donating to childhood cancer research, we should be donating to skin, lung, prostate and breast cancer research. However, some major players are already fully invested into that research. Pharmaceutical companies. Those cancers equate to billions of dollars in profits for Big Pharma, so trust me, they’re researching the heck out of treatment options. Where they don’t put their money into research are into the “orphan diseases” because they don’t impact enough people to really make a profit.
Well that’s where the National Cancer Institute and organizations like the American Cancer Society come in, right? We’ve all seen the bald kids leading the Relay for Life in our hometown. The problem is that the NCI and ACS earmark less than 5% of their research dollars for childhood specific cancers. This is where organizations like the Children’s Oncology Group Foundation are critical as they dedicate money and resources specifically to childhood cancer research.
Organizations like ours have dealt with living in the shadow of “the big cancers” for a very long time. If you want to see Charity Envy, just talk to a childhood cancer parent in September (which is National Childhood Cancer Awareness Month) when everyone is already starting to Go Pink for Breast Cancer Awareness Month in October. Everyone goes crazy with pink in October, which is great, but when the campaign starts in September and drowns out awareness for the kids, the Charity Envy really kicks in.
Childhood Cancer’s color is Gold by the way. Unfortunately you probably won’t see a lot of NFL players wearing Gold shoes or Gold hand towels or Gold mouth pieces in September. Maybe you’ve seen the #empiregogold campaign where the Empire State Building inexplicably turned down requests to light up Gold in September for childhood cancer, while making time to go green for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and blue for the Democratic National Convention. Thankfully, plenty of other major NYC landmarks stepped up to the plate to light up gold in September.
I have friends that are passionate about colorectal cancer, I have friends that are passionate about Autism, I have friends that are passionate about foster care, I have friends that are passionate about ending sex trafficking, I have friends that are passionate about clean water, I’m obviously passionate about childhood cancer, and the list goes on and on. These are all super worthy causes and deserving of awareness and funding, as is ALS. Which is why I participated in the ice bucket challenge (plus it was just fun, which is why it went viral in the first place).
So while a cause like ours (childhood cancer) has seen some success (and I could literally list dozens of amazing childhood cancer organizations working hard and raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for research), it pales in comparison to the ice bucket challenge. Which is why you might see some folks, much like the Empire State Building celebrating the TMNT, a bit green.
Aaron Horn is the Chief Information Officer at Radiology Protocols and is the President of BeatCancerToday.org, a nonprofit that raises funds for childhood cancer research and patient/family support programs. His journey while his son Eli battled two types of cancers before passing away in January of 2012 at the age of 7 continues to be his motivation to Beat Cancer. #elisarmy #charityenvy
@elihorn would have fully supported WhippingChildhoodCancer.com!
