Charity Events

donothoponpop

There's been an explosion of new events on the race calendar recently, and the majority of new events are using the fact they are raising money for charity as a major selling point in their event details. Obviously, there's a difference between an event which relies wholely on volunteers to raise funds for an expressed cause (for example the Wicklow Way Relay raising funds for the Junior squad, or the Inis Meain 10k raising funds for a local school), and a for-profit event which says it will give a proportion of funds raised to charity, or partner with a charity (Kildare half, Lough Key 10k for example).

There's also a plethora of charity events which purport to raise a lot of money for a specific charity, but give no details on how much of the raised money is going on support, hotel rooms, flights, "celebrity" fees, etc. (One such event is now "stickied" on the Race forum, and there's a miilion ways to get your flight and hotel paid to run the NY marathon, if you get "charity" sponsorship). In short, when an event organizer looks for publicity through this forum, there's little if any transparency on how much is being raised for charity, which can hardly be a good thing.

Let me just state that:
*I've no problem with anyone organizing a race for profit,
*I've no problem with high entry fees- people can pick and choose as they see fit,
*I've no problem with any of the events mentioned above, I've no axe to grind against them, and am not casting aspersions on their organizers motives.

We have no way of knowing just how "charitable" a race is, and until we do, the genuine ones risk getting lost under general cynicism. I suggest that if an event mentions "charity", it is upfront on how much of a donation (actual figure, or percentage of profits) the charity will benefit by. Saying "a proportion" isn't good enough- 0.0001% is a proportion, as is 100%. If you're organizing a race to make a personal profit, don't feel the need to mention charity at all, and just organize a good race, we're all grown ups here. There's been too many examples recently of surreptitious shilling from certain race directors, that I feel we could do with a bit more honesty.

--amadeus--

Ok, I'll try and tackle the issues you've raised as I see them. I'm just speaking for myself - the other two may have different opinions.

We do tackle shills - most recently here. Where they don't admit we follow up - this poster for example has been site banned for constantly shilling on behalf of a charity.

But we don't see every post in every thread over the three forums so if someone seems to be shilling then if you guys report it we can tackle it.

On RDs being more transparent we talked about getting a common set of questions for any new race thread. But since most of them aren't started by people involved we never really followed up on it. Again if you guys think it is an issue then we can resurrect that idea and try and impose it. It won't be a total solution but it might help with transparency.

Which brings me to the sticky in Events.

Boards gives the Mods a lot of leeway in how they run "their" forums. The Mods on A/R/T are heavily involved, not so much in moderating (this forum rarely needs it) but as posters. But we do have additional "powers" and we do have to use our judgement every now and again.

I saw the 32 County challenge and it looks like an excellent fundraising event. I'm deeply involved in another charity and I know that a lot of fundraising events are expensive to stage but are worth it for the excess funds they generate. The cause is an excellent one, the challenge is a big one and it took no effort on my part to "stick" it in Events. However that gives the event a bit of extra exposure and if that helps them then - from my perspective - it's all good.

Now I didn't run it past the other mods, which I should have done. But at the end of the day I don't think it's *that* obtrusive. And no matter what we think running is heavily commercial and heavily "charity-ized". I'm 100% with you that we need and want honesty from promoters. If you are claiming a race is "in aid of charity" then be clear about the proportion.

But special one off charity events are slightly different in that all monies after staging costs go to the designated charities. I'm comfortable with the decision to give that event some exposure.

Now if there is a strong feeling that this is the wrong decision I'll un-stick it. But we will never be able to get charity out of this place, it's too deeply ingrained in the culture of teh sport. I've said pretty often that I don't like that but it is what it is. We could have a free for all, question noone, have no favourites and take everything at face value. Or we could go to the other extreme - ban all mention of charity or events that are strictly about fundraising - for example restrict all Event chatter to AAI sanctioned events.

But one of those is daft and draconian and one of those leaves us with an unreadable dogs dinner. So we can accept that all kinds of people organise all kinds of events. And so we can pick an event or two every now and again to get behind while pushing for honesty and transparency from everyone, which is the policy that seems to have evolved. It does mean you have to trust Mods judgement but none of you have been slow to question decisions if you think we're wrong. And no-one forces anyone to read any thread so you can just ignore teh stuff you don't like.

chez-moi

One other thing to note on the charity front is it is not all about money. Many charities are as much about awareness of issues as they are about the money aspect.

Part of the upsurgance in running today is down to Charity events such as BUPA run for Marie Keating Foundation or Dockland for Autism. I'd imagine a large percentage of 1st time marathoners are there primarily to raise funds for their charity. I know I was one.

Maybe it's a sign of the times that we are questioning the charities. Times are tougher for everyone especially those in need of charity.

A bit of the fun of running would be lost without the charity aspect.

tunney

chez-moi wrote: »

One other thing to note on the charity front is it is not all about money. Many charities are as much about awareness of issues as they are about the money aspect.

Part of the upsurgance in running today is down to Charity events such as BUPA run for Marie Keating Foundation or Dockland for Autism. I'd imagine a large percentage of 1st time marathoners are there primarily to raise funds for their charity. I know I was one.

Maybe it's a sign of the times that we are questioning the charities. Times are tougher for everyone especially those in need of charity.

A bit of the fun of running would be lost without the charity aspect.

In my personal case its not a questioning of doubting the charities. There have just been too many times that a race for a charity has been nothing of the source and deliberately mislead people into thinking that a good proportional of the race entry fee went to charity when in fact none, or a token amount did.

plodder

chez-moi wrote: »

Dockland for Autism.

That's a good example. They stated clearly that 50% of the entry fee was going to the charity, which was very generous in my opinion, and leaves one in no doubt, that it was genuinely a charity event.

I notice as well, the event that is stickied in the events forum has been pretty up front about it as well.