Cancer charity gives 1 percent to help patients, BBB warns

The Better Business Bureau is warning Missourians about a Tennessee-based cancer charity that, it says, donates only 1 cent out of every dollar to direct aid for people with cancer.

Cancer Fund of America solicits donations nationwide through telemarketers, direct mail and online marketing campaigns. St. Louis-based BBB Charity Information Service Director Jim Judge said the charity is calling people all over the state, including Mid-Missourians, asking for donations.

“This exemplifies the fact that people need to give with their head and not just their heart,” Judge said.

A BBB investigation showed that more than 99 percent of Cancer Fund of America’s cash donations pay for professional fundraising costs, salaries for charity officials, consultant fees and other expenses related to its operations.

In 2007, the charity and a related support group raised slightly more than $17 million in cash donations but donated only about $54,000 of that money to unrelated groups or individuals. The vast majority of the remainder went to fundraising expenses, the BBB reported.

During that same year, the salaries and benefit packages for charity president James Reynolds. his two sons and a son-in-law totaled more than $537,000.

The charity also received about $5.8 million in non-cash donations that year, which, the Cancer Fund contends, were largely distributed to cancer patients and clinics in need. These items included liquid dietary supplements, examination gloves and bed pads.

Still, charity observers say, the track record is questionable. Nancy Kinney, academic director for the Nonprofit Management and Leadership Program at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, called the ratio of fundraising to actual giving “outrageous, no matter how you look at it.”

— T.J. Greaney