Volunteering and working for various causes has made me acutely aware of how easy it is for a charity to screw up in the eyes of the public. Percentage spent on admin is caped, and if it's spent in a different way (Decembers reports about the truly stupid spending of MADD Canada, for example) people get understandably upset. If a major donor turns out to be from an industry that caused the problem, the charity is understandably viewed askance. If a spokes person gets asked a way off topic question, they might not have a prepared answer and thinking on camera? Never looks as smart as it is. And then there’s the merry use of sound bites that make everyone’s job so very much easier. Basically, a percentage for putting out fires needs to be set aside for any larger charity to get down to the business of actually doing good work.

And a lot of really good, really amazing and inspiring and totally uplifting work gets done. It just doesn’t always make front page news.

The screw ups do, and I’m having trouble figuring out why – knowing that the more scandalous an issue is, the further it will travel on the media wires – the Breast Cancer Society of Canada decided to turn down a repeat donation from Exotic Dancers for Cancer’s annual event on the grounds that other (larger, more profitable…better?) donors didn’t want to be associated with them. They took the money in the past and while in the grand scheme of things it may not be a lot of cash ($6,000 raised in one night of stripping was to be split between a former dancer battling the disease and BCSC) it’s a) at least as disserving of respect as the money raised at an employee bake sale at Corporation X and b) expensive to turn down from a PR stand point. How many man hours are going in to dealing with irate donors who support this group of women? How many donations will they loose? What resources are being redirected to their communications and marketing departments? And how many other cancer charities are equally affected by this expense by association in what they do? Is the uptight Mystery Donor going to step in and quietly pick up the tab, saying “sorry! Our bad. Go back to work”? Likely no. Will this diversion in time and allocated resources feed into the public myth that there already is a cure for cancer (even though it’s really over 200 complex diseases with different triggers, causes and manifestation) and it’s being hidden to protect jobs? Likely yes. Thank you, Breast Cancer Society of Canada for offending marginalized women, raising the public ire, and deflecting resources industry wide from the business of the day to deal with your special policy issues. Thou art yahoos.