The idea of charity is to help those in need, and inspire others to get involved and raise awareness for a cause. Look at Stephen Sutton, the guy was an absolute hero and was a perfect example for how a charity should be run.

But over in America, a huge cancer charity by the name of Susan G. Komen Foundation has trademarked the phrase ‘For The Cure’. Not only this, but the charity is suing other smaller charities for using the phrase. As a result owners of the smaller charities are losing a lot of money on legal fees and are unable to run their advertised fundraisers. Sue Prom from ‘Mush For The Cure’ was outraged by the lawsuit:

We pay for the expenses out of our pockets, and we’ve never personally made a dime from it. We have t-shirts, sweatshirts, domain names, posters, stationery, all with ‘Mush for the Cure’ on it. What do we do with all the materials now? How are we gonna defend ourselves? We’re not like Komen.

Prom had $25,000 worth of merchandise, which she is now not permitted to sell for her cause. Komen’s general counsel, Jonathan Blum, claims the legal fees are only a ‘very small part’ of the budget, but an investigation into Komen’s financial statements show that almost $1 million of donor money is spent on legal fees. Un-fucking-believable.

Sounds like the people at Komen are running the charity as business for profit and not in the spirit of a charity. It’s these kind of stories which really makes me research before I donate to charity, especially the big ones, where money is wasted on futile issues. A lawsuit is one thing, but at least no one snapped their arm in half raising money for charity.