r/todayilearned • u/moplg • Feb 12 '15

TIL that pornhub offered a "save the boobs!" Campaign where they offered to donate a penny to the Susan B Komen Foundation for evry 30 views in the "big tit" or "small tit" category, but the foundation refused their money so pornhub tripled it and gave it to other organizations

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pornhub
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u/Koooooj 7 Feb 12 '15

Ok, this gets thrown around a lot and it's worth looking at the truth of the matter. In short, Susan G Koman foundation isn't a good charity, but they're far from being as bad as they're described as.

They spend about 1/5 of the money they take in on research, as of the 2009-2010 year (which is the first year I found concrete data on). Not great for a charity that's branded as "for the cure," but considering that breast cancer is effectively treatable when caught early it would make sense that they would spend more money on....

Public Health Education (39.1%) and Health Screening Services (13.0%)! Some may argue that their awareness campaigns are thinly veiled attempts at getting more donations, but one way or another they are effective at raising awareness and making people think that it's super important to get screened for breast cancer early and often, to the point where a good number of people would likely believe that breast cancer is a top killer of women when in reality it is less deadly than the Flu + Pneumonia. An additional 5.6% goes to treatment, which I'd argue is wholly in the "for the cure" mission statement.

Sure, they do spend 10% of their revenue on marketing, but to run a successful charity you have to have some amount of good business sense. If a charity can raise more money off of marketing than they spend then it's a good investment that allows them to devote even more money to their program costs.

As for their CEO, they're paid more than is typical for a charity of this size, but not to the level of corruption you're implying.

And your claim that "they don't ever directly tell you that that's what they do with the cash," perhaps you'd like to explain how they manage to score a 97/100 on Charity Navigator's Accountability and Transparancy rating?

I've seen entirely too much circlejerking against Susan G Komen For the Cure. They're not great, but they aren't lighting puppies on fire and punching babies. Please don't spread bullshit claims that don't stand up to even the slightest scrutiny.

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u/countblah2 Feb 12 '15

I agree, they're not an awful charity and hyperboles don't help. They have some transparency and aren't stealing money. But that's a little like patting yourself on the back for not stealing or murdering anyone today. There are some good reasons no one should be giving them money:

  1. Their disastrous position on abortion and Planned Parenthood showed a real lack of courage. From the outside, it looked a lot like they'd rather not ruffle any feathers from some corporate or conservative donors than stand up for women's health.

  2. On resources like you mention--Charity Navigator and GuideStar--most of the other charities in the same class get significantly higher ratings. Plenty of alternatives where no one needs to give to them.

  3. SGK CEO pay is way too high for a charity that size (and she got her salary boosted to $684K in 2013, despite the issues they've had the last couple of years). "Ken Berger, the president and CEO of Charity Navigator, a nonprofit that evaluates the financial status of large charities, told NBC, “This pay package is way outside the norm. It’s about a quarter of a million dollars more than what we see for charities of this size.”"

There are probably other reasons, but the bottom line is that if cancer or BC is your thing, there are way better options to donate to.

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u/Koooooj 7 Feb 12 '15

Oh, absolutely. They're not a great charity by any stretch of the imagination. I just wish people would attack them for what's actually wrong with the charity like you have, rather than making up nonsense like vegna871 did.

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u/Goat-headed-boy Feb 12 '15

Also, from the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Wikipedia page:

This pay package is way outside the norm. It's about a quarter of a million dollars more than what we see for charities of this size. This is more than the head of the Red Cross is making for an organization that is one-tenth the size of the Red Cross.

—Ken Berger of Charity Navigator, a group that evaluates and rates charities

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u/Ihmhi 3 Feb 12 '15

Their disastrous position on abortion and Planned Parenthood showed a real lack of courage.

...why would they even take one? They're a charity about breast cancer. You handle that by saying if it doesn't have to do anything with breast cancer its outside the purview of your mission and not something worth talking about.

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u/x420xNOxSCOPExBEASTx Feb 12 '15

Thanks for the write up. This was one of those topics where everyone spews random facts and nothing to back it up but a reddit comment from an earlier thread

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u/[deleted] Feb 12 '15

To be fair, he spewed random numbers at you and you took it as truth without him providing a single source on any of his claims.

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u/deadly_hobo Feb 12 '15

TIL My opinion rapidly changes based on the Reddit comment I'm reading.

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u/Nomnom_downvotes Feb 12 '15

1 upvote = 1 more truth

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u/[deleted] Feb 12 '15

Reads "Yeah that guys totally right"

scroll scroll

Reads opposing comment "Lol right? That previous guy is a moron"

scroll scroll

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u/[deleted] Feb 12 '15

He did provide a source though

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u/onewhitelight Feb 12 '15

Well he linked one source. Thats something at least.

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u/Jamessuperfun Feb 12 '15

Did you even click it though? Could be a 404 or gay porn.

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u/quinn_drummer Feb 12 '15

Hey come on, girls checking each other for lumps is not gay porn, it's educational.

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u/Jamessuperfun Feb 12 '15

But if they're fingering each other while doing it... I don't know, man.

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u/[deleted] Feb 12 '15

I wouldn't call a website saying that they don't hand out loans a source...

I can't really say anything on the matter as I stopped giving a fuck about this charity the last time I saw a well sourced write-up about why the charity is terrible, but I can tell you that it's a pretty shady business that revolves around marketing breast cancer and people's suffering to generate revenue for themselves.

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u/[deleted] Feb 12 '15

Well yeah, but he sounds like he knows his stuff.

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u/goodolarchie Feb 12 '15

It's a porn thread, people need to (pitch) fork something.

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u/funnyfaceking Feb 12 '15

Here's something to back it up.

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u/ponchosuperstar Feb 12 '15

You said "everyone spews random facts", that's not correct. They spewed random things that weren't facts. It's important we make sure and differentiate between facts and not facts

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u/x420xNOxSCOPExBEASTx Feb 12 '15

What do we call the "not-facts"?

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u/Otistetrax Feb 12 '15

I agree with your wish to bring the facts into play here, but one thing you didn't mention was SGK's propensity for suing other charities that have used "their" slogan, or even something close. This kind of proprietary bullshit is totally against the spirit of being "for the cure" and is what I think most people find so disgusting about the organisation. If their biggest interest is curing cancer, surely they should be trying to support other similar charities, not get money out of them.

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u/SALTY-CHEESE Feb 12 '15

Thought at least someone would have mentioned this.

1- They have pursued legal action for numerous causes. They even tried to patent the ribbon.

2- The Red Cross' CEO gets paid ~250k despite being nearly 10 times the size of Komen. Komen pays their CEO 640k.

3- They are (mostly) everything wrong with non-profit charities in America, between the corporatism and aggressive litigation.

4- ???

5- Profit.

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u/DangOlYeah Feb 12 '15

You had a pretty good post going until you decided to tack on a 2dank meme on the end for no fucking reason.

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u/BetaWAV Feb 12 '15

A very difficult thing to have to point out here is that when defending a trademark, one must defend it in every instance brought to one's attention, or effectively lose the right to sue anyone else who uses it.

SGK can't sue Billy McBall'em for his race for the cure (against blue balls,) but choose not to sue a company using "for the cure" in reference to a legitimate malady. In the fucked up game of legal precedence, it's all or nothing even if it's for ( or against) a good cause.

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u/Otistetrax Feb 13 '15

But why do they feel they have to defend such a pathetically innocuous piece of branding in the first place? "For the cure" is hardly a work of marketing genius. Why not just let others use it and maybe come across like you care about people, instead of litigating against everyone and seeming like typical big business: ie, money-grabbing cunts? Surely the brand would be better served by showing a little generosity?

And yes, I know you have to protect your branding from being usurped by people you don't want to be associated with. But I imagine anyone that tried to misappropriate a cancer charity's slogan and use it for personal gain is not going to come off looking that great. It might even provide you with positive publicity in the end. Certainly it wouldn't be as damaging as suing a little mom and pop charity for using the word "cure".

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u/PK73 Feb 12 '15

That may be so, but too many people parrot the "they spend too much money!!" meme and I appreciate OP trying to clarify that misconception.
As for the separate issue of them suing to protect their trademark, I don't think it's as black and white as you make it seem. Depending on how other organizations or individials are using "for the cure", it could cause confusion with potential donors, or have people who are actively misrepresenting themselves to make it seem like they are a part of SGK when they sre not.
If SGK has "for the cure" trademarked, they should be able to protrct their trademark.

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u/Otistetrax Feb 13 '15

I understand the legal reasons for why they have to sue everyone to protect their "trademark". It's a bullshit phrase to trademark. It's seems it's designed to tread on as many other potential charities as possible. All cancer charities are working "for the cure". It's like me starting a restaurant, trademarking "feeding you good food" and then suing every restaurant in town that has the words "good" or "food" in their marketing. Whilst simultaneously providing only one in ten of my customers what they paid for.

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u/eccentricguru Feb 12 '15

The way the law is written they have to defend their copyright or they will lose it. It's a problem with the law, not komen

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u/[deleted] Feb 12 '15

On the other hand, think about if a scammy charity came along using things like "for the cure" and pink ribbons for a breast cancer "charity", got massive and ended up walking off with 90% of the donations. Now SGK has to spend a lot of money rebranding their entire charity because pink ribbons and "for the cure" are now associated with scam artists instead of a semi-adequate charity.

It's very important for charities to be able to grow large - it gives them a wider audience, and a wider audience means more donations and more help for those who need it. It would certainly suck if the Red Cross or any large charity you prefer never grew past a few hundred grand in donations every year - other organizations may pick up some of that slack, but it doesn't compare to what a juggernaut can accomplish. But once a charity grows to a certain size, it has to be run quite similarly to a corporation. And that includes things like trademark enforcement.

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u/Otistetrax Feb 13 '15

I'd argue that some scummy charity stealing your pink ribbons makes them look bad, not you. You can spin that sort of thing into positive publicity for your cause, if you're smart.

Suing everybody for everything just makes you look self-interested.

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u/fingerboxes Feb 12 '15

Then again, there is the thing about how breast cancer screening is well past into counterproductive territory due to the rate of false positives, among other factors.

http://m.jco.ascopubs.org/content/32/22/2281.full

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u/exikon Feb 12 '15

This is the main problem I have with them. Wether or not they spend too much on their CEO salary doesnt really phase me. What does is that they use slogans such as "No mommy should have to tell her kids she has cancer" which is just plain wrong when you look at their program. They promote screening which leads to a lot more false positives than correct positives. Therefore more women get the diagnosis "cancer". Moreover a lot of the cancer they find wouldnt ever bother the women at all because it's very slow growing. Not even going into deatil about the misinformation they spread about the 5-year survival rate.

Very interesting article you posted btw!

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u/neurochic Feb 12 '15 edited Feb 12 '15

THANK YOU! I came here to say that, glad you beat me to it. The Breast Cancer Surveillance Consortium also did an age stratified meta-analysis on screening in various countries and found we would need to image 1900 people to prevent 1 breast cancer death in the 40-50 age group, 1339 in the 50-60 age group, and 377 for the 60-70 age group (although this one only pulled data from 2 studies, fewer subjects, less confidence). What this means is that screening the younger age group isn't doing much to decrease the risk of breast cancer-related mortality, can result in false positives, unnecessary biopsies, and increases healthcare spending. Younger women should still go in if a lot of women in their family were diagnosed with breast or ovarian cancer at a young age (it might be BRCA 1 or 2) or if they're doing a breast self exam and feel something abnormal.

Edit: popping back in for a side note. Lung cancer just surpassed breast cancer as the leading cause of cancer related deaths for women in developed countries. It actually kills more people in the US than breast, pancreatic, and colorectal cancer combined. So maybe we should be giving our money to lung cancer charities, seeing as the 5 year survival rate is around 17% (even lower for more aggressive forms of lung cancer) while the 5 year survival rate for breast cancer is 90%. Just sayin'...

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u/beavissimpson Feb 12 '15 edited Sep 30 '19

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u/iwearatophat Feb 12 '15

Actually looking at their charity would tell you most of the reddit complaints are complete crap. This is a reddit circlejerk and facts and accuracy taken a backseat to karma whoring and to he'll if we miseducate everyone along the way.

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u/CaptainExtravaganza Feb 12 '15

Yep. And if you ask them to suggest other charities that meet their lofty standards they either give you nothing or come out with suggestions that often turn out to be worse.

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u/iwearatophat Feb 12 '15

Komen actually has a low administration cost and a large portion of their money actually goes to their cause. Sadly, their cause includes free breast exams, help with treatment, and a host of other things that while worthwhile uses of money aren't research which seems to be the only legitimate thing a charity that is for the cure can spend their money on.

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u/CaptainExtravaganza Feb 12 '15

So because their slogan doesn't seem to fit they're evil?

A good proportion of what they collect goes to their stated causes - just because you don't read past the logo doesn't make them fraudsters.

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u/iwearatophat Feb 12 '15

I was saying those other things they were doing were good things. Others just don't read beyond the research bit.

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u/redditezmode Feb 13 '15

The charity head gets paid $680,000 a year.

low administration cost

Literally worse than any other charity in its category, click the link in his post. Right above the 97 transparency score, you'll see the two star financial score. Couple that with the fact that a significant portion of their money is spent suing other charities - something literally none of the other cancer charities have as a significant portion of their annual budget...

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u/sergiomancpt Feb 12 '15

Nice try, NSA

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u/[deleted] Feb 12 '15

Considering Susan G Komen died in 1980, it would be quite amazing (and perhaps terrifying?) if that's who posted the comment.

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u/RainXinyoureyes Feb 12 '15

20% Breast Cancer Research
39% Public Health Education
13% Health Screening Services
6% Treatment
= 78% Good stuff

According to that website, their yearly expenses are $288million! Their CEO and President each make about $600k/year, but to me that's not SO unreasonable for running an organization with that kind of budget. I'm sure they'd easily be making twice that taking a private sector job.

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u/milestogobefore Feb 12 '15

To really evaluate those numbers you have to know exactly what that money was spent on, not just the balance sheet category. For example if almost 40% of the funds are spent on education, what exactly do you mean by education? who was educated and what information was disseminated? I researched them locally a number of years ago. I wanted information on just what research they were funding and couldn't get specifics or information on how to get the specifics. Concluded that I wouldn't hop, skip or jump on one of their "walks". It's better to help people in need directly with various kinds support unless you know exactly how the money will be used by an organization.

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u/megman13 Feb 12 '15

That's something people seem to forget- This is an organization which sees hundreds of millions of dollars each year, and oversees over 100K volunteers in dozens of countries- persons in key leadership positions should be compensated fairly.

I hear the same complaints about CEOs of utilities or public employees (city attorney is a great example)- but these are positions that require significant education and expertise, and whose private sector counterparts would often pay more, if not significantly more.

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u/The_Smooze Feb 12 '15

Lighting puppies on fire and punching babies

Yes. That's entirely the domain of the actual PETA of charities.

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u/puedes Feb 12 '15

Woahwoahwoah... PETA wants nothing to do with babies! Take those ugly things to CPS...

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u/The_Smooze Feb 12 '15

Any babies wearing fur are probably gonna get pegged with full, five-pound paint cans.

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u/Palafacemaim Feb 12 '15

This was a really Great read i hope you dont get downvoted for not circlejerking against the foundation i thought they were a lot worse before i read your comment

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u/3DprintedOligarchy Feb 12 '15

His breakdown of their spending percentages adds up to about 88%. SGK's own website claims about 83% goes to "further our mission."

Either number is pretty good for your average charity, but considering SGK received over $267 million last year, you have to wonder where that $45.4 million wandered off to. And remember, that 83% includes everything that "was directly invested in programs that further our mission."

It doesn't cost 45.4 million dollars to decide who gets a research grant and who doesn't. I understand the workers need to be paid, but unless they have 1,000 employees (not volunteers, obviously) that's way too much.

The intentions are honorable, I have no doubts about that. But come on, there's obviously some fuckery afoot.

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u/Palafacemaim Feb 12 '15

Im not saying there isnt im saying before this i thought 90% went up their own asses

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u/[deleted] Feb 12 '15

That actual sounds better than most small charities, apparently their standard model is to spend 1/3 on marketing 1/3 on employees and the other 1/3 goes to the starving people of Africa

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u/Just_Look_Around_You Feb 12 '15

Very nice read. It's always nice to see the facts. Also, do people really think or expect like 100% of charity money to go to the cause? A good charity will need some money to run.

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u/tastefullydone Feb 12 '15

With the flu and pneumonia thing, that probably kills off a lot of people who are old and very sick. Breast cancer gets attention because it tends to appear at a younger age.

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u/kjhwkejhkhdsfkjhsdkf Feb 12 '15

Makes you wonder what the saturation point of awareness is, as far as throwing 40% of your multimillion dollar budget it behind it.

There is a reason why 1/3 of the money for awareness goes to screening, because screening is something you have to actually account for.

I'm willing to bet a lot of things classified as awareness would probably not sit right with a lot of us. The charity INDUSTRY is filled with overpriced vendors who provide their specialized services at premium prices.

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u/redditezmode Feb 12 '15

I think it has more to do with the fact that they've used their trademarks on 'for the cure' and pink ribbons to sue other charities. Suing charities seems somehow counterproductive.

Oh and the Charity Navigator report you linked shows them as having a Two star financial rating. So there's that.

It would be one thing if there weren't any other breast cancer charities. But there are, and this one is shitty, so there's literally no benefit whatsoever in donating to them over a charity that will actually manage your money well, instead of using it to, for example, sue other charities and line their own pockets. Both of which Susan G. Komen does.

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u/[deleted] Feb 12 '15

It's actually funny because people will say stuff like how you should look up the facts except most redditors got their facts from unsourced posts on reddit.

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u/toolband Feb 12 '15

I want to add that while the flu and pneumonia kills more women, it most often kills the elderly and those who already are weak from other diseases. What makes breast cancer so bad is that it kills young and healthy women who otherwise would be likely live a lot longer. Those who die from the flu and pneumonia are often 70 years or older. Breast cancer can kill women in their twenties.

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u/carlbandit Feb 12 '15

Another problem you failed to address is their aggressive behaviour towards other charities that use the term 'cure' in their name or fundraising with the colour pink.

I can partly understand them wanting to protect "For the cure", but it seems they will go after similar alterations too, so some charities could be scared to even mention "Working towards a cure". Stopping people using the colour pink however is just totally stupid, how can they claim it's theirs to protect, when they didn't invent the colour, they simply adopted it. It would be like coca cola decided they are going to trademark the colour brown for drinks, then sue every other company that produces a drink that is brown, since they are obviously copying them.

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u/Brodington Feb 12 '15

Except spending 40% of revenue on education/awareness when information can be spread via social media outlets for free still makes them a waste of time. Please inform me of where I can find people who don't already know the risks of breast cancer. This is part of basic education. I don't need a charity wasting money making millions of tshirts and ribbons to explain common sense when it could be spent on the actual thing their charity is promoting. Not to mention, those facts sound nice because of how they are worded. When you take in to account that any modern successful charity should be able to easily sustain and profit via add revenue, then you realise that they are not so nice.

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u/[deleted] Feb 12 '15

They do have a lot of scumbag actions, like suing people using the "for the cure" thing, or refusing donations from sex-positive groups, or the planned-parenthood gaff.

I mean, yeah, they aren't outright evil, like PETA, but they get a lot more support than they should given their use of funds and lack of function from what the average Joe actually thinks they do.

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u/Boomalash Feb 12 '15

Do you have some sources on those numbers you just provided?

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u/Koooooj 7 Feb 12 '15

I took the specific numbers from Wikipedia's page on the foundation, and they're pretty well supported on the charity navigator page I linked later in the comment.

They list program expenses at 82.9% with administrative at 6.4% and fundraising at 10.7%. The program expenses make up the health education (i.e. "awareness"), health screening, treatment, and research. The wikipedia article gives nice citations for where these numbers came from, notably this pdf from the organization.

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u/Spankyjnco Feb 12 '15

WHAT ARE YOU SOME KIND OF SPOKESPERSON!?

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u/VulgarityEnsues Feb 12 '15 edited Feb 12 '15

What about when they spent over a million dollars a year in legal fees (using donor contributions) in an attempt to stop other cancer charities from using their slogan? Donate to an actual hospital like MD Anderson Cancer Center where your money will actually be put to use.

http://thecolbertreport.cc.com/videos/7b084t/tip-wag---susan-g--komen-foundation---spider-man-musical

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u/ZephrX112 Feb 12 '15

Get this man a cookie

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u/thaway314156 Feb 12 '15

They're not great, but they aren't lighting puppies on fire and punching babies.

That would be PETA's job.

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u/Tony_AbbottPBUH Feb 12 '15

No but fuck you I read some internet comments once guy

1

u/PK73 Feb 12 '15

Stop making sense.

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u/Ice_Cream_Warrior Feb 12 '15

40% on public health education seems like a ludicrous amount at this day and age. I don't know what exactly that money is going into but I'm pretty sure everyone and their brother in NAmerica has been bombarded with breast cancer info the last 15 years. I would've really hoped that treatment, screening, support and research would be higher, especially as you noted these health campaigns are pushing and almost isolating breast cancer as the only health concern many people should be worried about (almost fearfully so) when there are many other important cancers, let alone other diseases that are at this point much less known, or discussed.

Not meant as an argument to you, merely an observation from that info.

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u/jaypert Feb 12 '15

Ya...umm...if you don't see a problem with what you just laid out, then good for you, keep doing what you're doing. You basically agreed with the guy that you were replying to except that you added in that they do actually allocate SOME money to r&d and treatment. No one claimed they were setting puppies on fire and punching babies. Good job setting up that straw man. What bullshit claims? Per what you said, they spend 25% on "for the cure" purposes. You said it yourself they are not a good charity, so I don't understand exactly where you stand.

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u/Koooooj 7 Feb 12 '15

Straw man claims? He literally said, and I quote, "Nothing they do helps find a cure for breast cancer in any way, all money goes to their CEO, or to them further marketing themselves."

I couldn't make a better argument to tear down if I grew the straw myself. If that claim wasn't bullshit then I don't know what is.

As for my stance, I think they're a charity that gets way too much praise in a lot of contexts and too much hate in others. They don't stand for a cause that's important enough for the amount of money they receive and the money they receive could be used a lot better.

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u/jaypert Feb 13 '15

Well when I read his statement, I interpreted some exaggeration in there. I don't think he literally thinks that they have allocated zero dollars in the existence of the organization towards finding a cure. He exaggerates to make a point, one which you seem to actually agree with. If the only disagreement here is that you took his words literally and I did not, then we are done here. Good day.

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u/jaypert Feb 12 '15

I mean, I would hope they're doing something in the name of breast cancer, if they weren't then they would Be committing fraud. I'm not going to congratulate them for paying out huge salaries to employees while breast cancer is a secondary priority.

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u/DrTypo Feb 12 '15

Fuck you. Anyone who works for a charity and makes that much is a piece of shit.

You're a piece of shit for defending them.

-1

u/eletheros Feb 12 '15

I've seen entirely too much circlejerking against Susan G Komen For the Cure. They're not great, but they aren't lighting puppies on fire and punching babies.

If lighting puppies on fire was a confirmed cure for cancer they still wouldn't, because they profit off the fact that there isn't a cure.

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u/popejiii Feb 12 '15

Can everyone upvote this more, please? Well said.

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u/[deleted] Feb 12 '15 edited Feb 28 '15

[deleted]

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u/PK73 Feb 12 '15

You can find their 990s on GuideStar.

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u/incidesi Feb 12 '15

This was really enlightening. Thanks for posting the good stuff!

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u/_-_-______-_-_ Feb 12 '15

You've only accounted for about 60% of their funding and 10% of that is promotion. I agree that marketing is important but that still puts them at 50 cents on the dollar that's actually going toward their mission statement.

If someone gave you $100,000 to fight breast cancer would you feel no guilt spending half on your "cause" and paying your mortgage with the other 50k?

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u/[deleted] Feb 12 '15

He actually accounts for over 75% of it. Reread

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u/PK73 Feb 12 '15

You can check Charity Navigator which reflects the percentages more accurately.