Why is Komen for the Cure is squandering donors’ trust?

Selling out for the Cure

What started out all pink and pretty is turning into quite a brouhaha.

It all comes down to one word: “Cure.”

It’s not “Susan G. Komen for Mammograms,” or “Susan G. Komen for Breast Cancer Awareness,” or “Susan G. Komen for Worldwide Domination.”

It’s “for the Cure.”

So when women tuned in to the Home Shopping Network and saw Komen founder Nancy Brinker hawking a new Komen perfume called “Promise Me,” they wondered…is this really the path to a cure?

On blogs and Internet forums, women took issue with the very idea of selling this product. You see, perfumes often make women ill when they’re experiencing chemical sensitivity as a side effect of chemotherapy.

One of those women is Lani Horn, a breast cancer survivor who writes under the blogging name ChemoBabe. She says that when she was undergoing chemo, the last thing she wanted to be around was any kind of artificial fragrance.

Horn: “I almost passed out when a woman at my gym sprayed perfume in the locker room. I was shaking and it took a half an hour for the episode to pass.”

Other Komen critics note that certain ingredients in Promise Me have been linked to cancer in lab animals.

Those are legitimate concerns. But let’s get down to brass tacks. Komen is about raising money, so let’s look at what Promise Me means to its bottom line.

Komen raises money by selling its new perfume as well as a wide variety of other merchandise (t-shirts, mugs, pet collars, pajamas, watches, jewelry, etc.), but how much of that money is devoted to actually finding a cure?

To answer that question, another blogger — a financial analyst — researched Komen’s public documents and broke down the math like this…

* A bottle of Promise Me costs $59.00 on Home Shopping Network
* But less than 14% of the sale goes to Komen
* And from what I can find it looks like about 25% of Komen’s net revenue goes to research…which comes out to about
   $1.91 per bottle

Safe to say, the average woman is probably unaware that after spending nearly $60 on a bottle of Promise Me, Komen
keeps about $6.00 for administrative and other costs, then devotes a whopping $1.90 of her purchase to research for the cure!

Meanwhile, it sure appears that someone must be making a handy profit from a product sold through this famous non-profit charitable organization.

And as for that $6.00 Komen keeps, I have to wonder how much goes to their legal eagles.

As I mentioned last year, some of Komen’s revenues go straight to legal expenses. The Wall St. Journal reports that Komen attorneys are kept busy filing trademark oppositions to small fund-raising drives that display pink ribbons or use the phrase “for the Cure” — such as Cupcakes for the Cure, Surf for the Cure, etc.

I hope that Promise Me is a strong scent. That way, when Komen orders mom & pop charities to cease and desist, while creating questionable partnerships with large corporations like KFC, they can cover up the stink.

Sources:
“Komen’s pink ribbons raise green, and questions” Liz Szabo, USA Today, 7/17/11, yourlife.usatoday.com

“Komen Has Crossed the Line” Lani Horn, ChemoBabe, 5/28/11, chemobabe.com

“Komen by the Numbers” The Cancer Culture Chronicles, 1/24/11, cancerculturenow.blogspot.com

“Charity Brawl: Nonprofits Aren’t So Generous When a Name’s at Stake” Clifford M. Marks, Wall St. Journal, 8/5/10, online.wsj.com