Run for Whatever

Until there's a cure, we can draw a salary

Stories like this are reliable time-fillers for local TV news: Run for Breast Cancer! Run for Leukemia! Run for ALS! Breathless (literally) interviews with participants who are thrilled to be helping cure a horrible disease.

Do you ever wonder where the money goes, or is it just for good feelz (and exercise)? I watched a TV news segment about a run for ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) like this one:

and looked up the 2024 IRS form 990 for ALS Network, the charity that runs these events. Every charitable organization is required for file a 990.

Summary

Here’s the relevant part of the first page:

So they took in $13,015,478, made grants of $1,535,124 (we’ll look at these next), had salaries & benefits of $6,068,623, and had “other expenses” of $4,364,982.

Grants

On page 43 of the 990, we see what grants they made:

ALS Association San Diego Chapter 198,164
ALS Association Greater Sacramento Chapter 216,336
ALS Association Orange County Chapter 173,934
Univ. of California, Irvine 100,000
Faculty LLUSM * 100,000
Univ. of California, Dep’t of Neurosciences 100,000
Univ. of California, Davis ALS Clinic 100,000
Cedars Sinai Medical Center 100,000
Forbes Norris ALS Center 100,000
Univ. of California, San Francisco 100,000
Keck Medical of USC, ALS Clinic 100,000

• LLUSM = Loma Linda University School of Medicine

Two of the grants are unrestricted grants (not tied to ALS): Irvine and SF. The grants to other ALS chapters: who knows what they did with it? Some probably went to research; some to salaries. So let’s only subtract out the unrestricted grants, and we’re left with $1,188,434 for ALS research and treatment (At most. Some of the money to the local chapters is also going to overhead).

Doing the math: 1,188,434 / 13,015,478, or 0.0913. So, 9.1% of your donation to ALS Network, or your fee for running in one of these events, actually goes to ALS causes.

Salaries

The 990 also discloses the charity’s compensation of its top employees (page 50)

Fred B. Fisher 411,567
Sheri Strahl 375,803
Cheryl Fluk 260,910
Jon Asher Garfinkel 167,572
Audra Hindes 158,984
Paul Willet 153,219

Your Money

There is an event in Newbury Park, CA on May 16. Here’s the page to sign up: $105 to ride 25 or 40 miles, or $70 to hike. If you ride in this, you’ve donated $9.59 to ALS causes. Doing the math on their gross revenue of $13,015,478, you’ve also donated $12.33 to Mr. Fisher, Garfinkel, and Willet and Ms. Strahl, Fluk, and Hines.

On the other hand, you could donate $5 to each of their grantees, $55 in total, and they’d be getting more than ALS Network pays them. Then you could just ride 40 miles with your friends and family, and use the $50 you save to buy lunch.