Parachuting for Charity: A 5-year audit (1999)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10476298

by rwmj • 7 years ago

210 136 7 years ago

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Zenst• 7 years ago

This is 1999 and popping "parachute jump for NHS" into Google yields many results and let's not forget the ADsense promoted ones as well.

So a known issue and one perpetuated still today for profit. But this is a pattern we see play out over and over again and alas without some media drama incident of say a charity parachutist landing on a child in a playground with fatalities - nothing will change. Heck - look at bigger issues like climate change and how long that's been known about and how long it drags out.

Which makes you wonder why governments who have departments for everything, lack one for common sense education as many sound messages get lost in the void of nothingness.

im3w1l• 7 years ago

The injury rate in charity-parachutists was 11%

That's how-are-they-even-allowed-to-operate high. Can this really be right?

krilly2• 7 years ago

Bear in mind that you wouldn't do a jump for charity if you wanted to it anyway. Their usual clientele would probably be very fit and young, whereas charity jumpers would be more likely to be old or unfit.

So I'm sure their overall injury rates are lower

VBprogrammer2• 7 years ago

That doesn't ring true to me at all. Almost all of the people I've seen do some kind of charity extreme sport event would definitely have done it without the charity part if that was an option.

sosborn• 7 years ago

At first I was thinking no big deal, it probably includes things like minor scrapes and bruises from the landing, but then I saw this:

Sixty-three percent of casualties who were charity-parachutists required hospital admission, representing a serious injury rate of 7%

Can any skydivers give insight on this?

cromulent2• 7 years ago

That sounds extremely high to me, but I couldn't find which 5 year period was studied. Back in round parachute days, injuries were much more common. Most people who have jumped in the last 30 years have never seen someone use a roundy.

These days most people do tandems, and if you follow instructions and raise your legs upon landing, you won't get hurt.

viacoffee• 7 years ago

Skydiver here. I'm not familiar with this particular event, but that does seem rather high even for those years. In the USA we average ~1 incident per 250,000 sport skydives. Tandems are around 1 in 500,000.

You can find the USPA incidents here: https://uspa.org/Find/FAQs/Safety

digikazi4• 7 years ago

I'll bite. Assuming those charity parachutists were doing solo jumps using the static line system, it makes sense. The static line exit isn't dangerous per se, but the landing can be... challenging. For example, the old style round parachute couldn't be slowed down on landing, it had a constant rate of descent. On landing,you had to hit the ground and do a PLF [1].

The square canopy (or the ram-air canopy) can indeed be slowed down. It's also a lot more manoeuvrable, and can go quite fast. A novice might not be able to correctly judge the speed/altitude/wind direction - and if not handled properly, a square canopy can land you on your face or break a leg.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parachute_landing_fall

EDIT: spelling and added a link

darekkay• 7 years ago

I'm a skydiver. My guess (without knowing any details): while regular skydiving is rather safe, event jumps are much riskier. There's the unknown terrain, a usually much smaller landing zone, obstacles (trees etc). Low turns might be necessary, leading to a high speed landing. And there's also a psychological variable (many people are watching you). All those factors make the landing much more difficult.

arbol2• 7 years ago

This seems way too high and is probably the result of not enough data.

digikazi4• 7 years ago

Yes, that figure is probably right. I did my first parachute jump in the summer of '98, a year before this study. It was a static line jump, using a round canopy; ancient stuff even then! I had wanted to skydive for a long time, so it wasn't a "charity jump."

However, almost everyone else on my course was - they were really young as well, a bit naive and maybe a little dazed by the idea of jumping out of a plane. Some of them were Chinese/Korean students, with a very, very rudimentary grasp of the English language; I genuinely have no idea how they all passed the course, but they did. When they went on to jump, I think just under half of them ended up with broken legs/sprained ankles and so on. If my memory serves me right during the same drop the jumpmaster managed to kill himself too.

To sum up, 11% sounds about right.

htfu3• 7 years ago

Wait, you're not exactly sure whether your instructor died or not?

Just how drunk were you? Mushrooms are way more rewarding anyways.

jcampbell1• 7 years ago

This is round parachute static line. You hit the ground at about the same speed as jumping from 10 feet. Completely manageable on a windless day or over a freshly plowed field. Outside of those conditions, it’s a shitshow.

jbob2000• 7 years ago

What better way to show someone the value of a hospital system than to have them admitted and treated by it!

perl4ever4• 7 years ago

New doctors have to practice on someone...

blowski• 7 years ago

Published in 1999.

chiefalchemist2• 7 years ago

"...and places a significant burden on health resources."

How can 174 people place significant burden on NHS? I understand their concern but certainly there are bigger fish to fry.

Also, more importantly, the analysis is completely flawed. Their ROI is based on the injuried, not all who donated and dived.

refurb2• 7 years ago

Parachute jumping for charity is not cost-effective in raising money, as the cost of treatment of the 11% who are injured is far in excess of any money raised by the rest.

There analysis is correct. They looked across all charity parachutists, the medical costs for those injured versus total amount raised.

How can it put a burden on the NHS?

Of 105 patients admitted to hospital, 66 (63%) required operative intervention.

Can you imagine the 1 or 2 hospitals dealing with this? The system overall can deal with it, but not the local providers.

Apfel• 7 years ago

Their analysis actually only focused on two centres in the east of Scotland.

There were ~1500 jumpers in 5 years across the two centres, of which 174 (11%) were injured at a cost of £3751 per injury.

chiefalchemist2• 7 years ago

Where does it mention the total universe of donors/jumpers? It says the average donation was 30 quid. That said, 30 to jump is not the same as 30 per donated.

Too many loose ends here, or a sloppy job at communication.

skue• 7 years ago

This study was published in 1999 and while it is a wonderful example of incentives gone awry, it’s also dated.

Per the article, “All charity parachuting in our study was apparently done by static line methods from 2500± 3000 feet.” [1] Static line parachuting means the participant jumps solo and a cord automatically opens the parachute for them when they exit the plane. It’s very different than skydiving tandem, which is far more common these days and much safer.

That still doesn’t mean that skydiving for charity makes any sense financially. It strikes me as absurd that people who want to skydive collect money from friends under the expectation that a small percentage of the donated funds make their way to a charity —- £30 per jump for the NHS, though apparently more for other organizations. [2]

But then this comes from a country that is trying to convince the rest of the world that wearing a clown nose for a day is a charitable act. [3]

Y’all can’t just give for the sake of giving? ;-)

[1] https://www.gwern.net/docs/sociology/1999-lee.pdf

[2] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3224643/Why-tell-ch...

[3] https://rednoseday.org/

smcl2• 7 years ago

I have never understood this either. It might seem a bit cynical but it often feels a bit like someone trying to:

1. Do something cool they always wanted to

2. Get someone else to pay for it

3. Get some feel-good story to tell their friends in the process

Perhaps it’s not the case, and that most people are well intentioned, don’t think about it this way and aren’t trying to do anything nefarious. But it’s hard to shake the idea once it’s in your head :-/

fooblat2• 7 years ago

My uncle once asked me to sponsor him to do a charity marathon. I contacted the charity and found out that at most 50% of my donation would go to the charity and the rest would pay for him training and event fees.

I did sponsor him but I kept thinking it would have been better to send 100% of my donation directly to the charity in my uncle's name. Of course that would have been a lot less fun for my uncle.

irjustin2• 7 years ago

If everyone wins, why is this bad?

As long as the person raising the money does 'something they always wanted to' under their own dime and raises money, I can't see anything wrong with it. Obviously, this article highlights there's a fundamental but obscure flaw with this specific method.

fortran77• 7 years ago

As a person with rosacea, I found wearing the giant red clown nose offensive. Nobody, of course, takes me seriously even though I am mostly serious. I wrote a slew of angry letters for the organizations behind the red-nose chastising them for mocking and appropriating the symptoms of a disease.

https://www.ucd.ie/t4cms/UCD%20School%20of%20Medicine%20Rosa...

CorvusCrypto3• 7 years ago

depends on the goal. I've parachuted for a charity event before. It's more about the awareness than anything as well. You tend to use an event that attracts people because of some interest factor and it in turn generates more awareness to that charity as well as more sponsors. It's not just about the skydiving after all. Think of it as a form of marketing but for [marketing to] people interested in people doing something stupid.

Edit: I should say I did this as an A-license holder

mytailorisrich• 7 years ago

To be honest, many charity events cost more to organise and run than they collect in money.

A bit of a (related) tangent...

As a parent this is really obvious for almost all events that schools run. Of course, an argument in those cases is that they have educational value, but I think that teaching to do the maths and to be effective beyond the immediate desire to "help and do something" also has educational value.

Sometimes we, parents, have to spend £20 to get the child ready for the event where they are asked to donate £1 for the chosen charity...

projektfu• 7 years ago

In other news, programs like Product (RED) cost much more in marketing and advertising than they raise.

https://web.archive.org/web/20070624105650/http://www.africo...

The question, I suppose, is whether it's better for charity that it collects a few dollars that it might have not received anyway.

The example in the OP is particularly egregious because it suggests that society is paying a high cost for a few dollars donated to charity.

braythwayt2• 7 years ago

Some years ago I organized some bridge* events for charity. It was as simple as selecting a worthy cause (a children’s hospital), signing an agreement that we were going to turn over the funds, collecting the funds, and handing them over.

These were a minuscule success, and I later thought that a “fun run” would be a good way to raise some money. I asked around about how to organize such things, and I was connected to a firm that organized these things as a service.

They took me to a nice lunch, which I thought was a bad sign. “Never buy anything in a room with a chandelier,” is the old saying, and while there was no chandelier in the restaurant, the metaphor was nevertheless on point.

When I finally got the actual details of how the run would operate, I realized that the firm’s fees would greatly exceed the amount of money that would end up going to the charity.

I speculate that the “market” for these services are people who want to buy some respectability. Had I gone though with the deal and the run was a success, everyone would think I was a nice person doing nice things for people in need, even if the actual numbers would show that I was a nice person doing nice things for a service company’s revenues.

N=1, of course, but I have had an extremely cynical view of charity events ever since. There appears to be an entire industry built around siphoning away 90%-99% of every dollar adjacent to charity.

———

* Bridge the card game, not the BASE-jumping location.

tareqak• 7 years ago

Reputation-laundering. I would not be surprised if such an adjacent industry also exists for foreign aid.

nradov3• 7 years ago

I've participated in many such charity fun runs and see no problem with this type of arrangement. It takes a lot of work and experience to host successful running events: registration, insurance, web site development, course marking, permits, aid stations, timing, t-shirts, clean up, etc. It's worth paying an event management company to ensure everything runs smoothly. Shop around and you might find a smaller local company willing to do it for a lower price.

In the end the charity still gets more money than they had before and the runners get some exercise: win / win. Plus you've raised awareness of the cause and some participants will go on the become regular donors.

elliekelly2• 7 years ago

But people think they are donating money to a charity, not purchasing an experience from an event company. It’s misleading at best.

gwbas1c• 7 years ago

I realized that the firm’s fees would greatly exceed the amount of money that would end up going to the charity.

So who pays the bill for the firm's fees? Might be okay if it's a "sponsored by megacorp" kind of thing, but if it's just a civic-minded individual who's actually trying to run a real fundraiser?

ramraj072• 7 years ago

I see big problems with this type of arrangement - you raise ten dollars while spending five thousand on the event itself. Yet you will call this a charity event? Also what awareness? There are people who don't know breast cancer is bad (actually breast cancer isn't even that bad anymore. Most patients get quite a good cure)?

This is on top of the fact that the charity again takes a huge admin cut, and I'm willing to bet that the kind that organizes marathons with pink ribbons are the same that have 95% expense ratios.

If you go to Panda Express the person asks if you want to donate a few dimes for charity. I bet they contribute more to charity than these pretentious events. You don't call it a charity lunch do you?

Do these events if you want but be honest and call it for what they are which is just circular congratulatory social Sunday pasttimes for people with too much money (and ps someone somewhere might get a buck or two, maybe).

ken• 7 years ago

First, they sometimes get very little. “Just 1% of Seattle Marathon money goes to charity” [1]. You’d do better to just go door to door.

Second, often this “awareness” is completely absent, even among volunteers. I ran a race once where the primary charity was lung cancer research, and volunteers along the course were smoking.

[1] https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/just-1-of-seattle-...

__jal• 7 years ago

In the end the charity still gets more money than they had before and the runners get some exercise

So "they" should be thankful for any old crumbs left on the table after their betters are done patting themselves on the back?

Honestly, I prefer the Randian take on charity to this. At least that one has the virtue of not obfuscating.

conjectures3• 7 years ago

"everyone would think I was a nice person doing nice things for people in need"

Notwithstanding effective altruists.

That aside, when I spent more time doing running & triathlon there was an unspoken rule that people don't ask the group for charitable funding for these things.

A large number of charity marathon runners will be effectively buying a place in a race they did not good-for-age qualify for. There's nothing wrong with that and cool that a proportion of the ticket price goes to charity, but it would be great if more people could just own it.

The general rule is don't ask other people to pay for your fun adventure activities.

ticmasta2• 7 years ago

Well, check out the annual reports from your favourite charitable organizations; the most successful ones have a high correlation with those where fund raising costs is the biggest line-item expense. It seems to be this "grow or die" mentality spilling over from the corporate world. United Way is one of the biggest offenders.

I wish more charities would constrain themselves to their original narrow mandate without success inevitably growing their "addressable market"...

Ntrails2• 7 years ago

Big Charities are fundraising companies with a branch of operations which do some actual good.

ahi2• 7 years ago

A career ago I spent a good chunk of my time going over the financials of non-profits large and small. It's an entire industry passing grants back and forth, skimming a percentage each time. United Ways are typically run by a board of trustees consisting of the local elite; lawyers, accountants, small business owners. The UW sends money to other local non-profits who spend it on services and rent from those same lawyers, accountants, and small business owners while employing their failsons. Thousands of donations go in, and at the end someone gets a bag of dented cans of cream of mushroom soup.

conjectures3• 7 years ago

You can find more effective charities at givewell.org

Kevin_S• 7 years ago

I'm an academic researcher that studies nonprofits and trust me, you are not alone in thinking this. But the problem with charities constraining themselves to their original narrow mandate is that this leads to tiny nonprofits trying to solve the greatest challenges facing humanity (poverty, disease, etc.). Tiny nonprofits simply cannot impact the world significantly.

Sure there are examples of egregious shadiness in nonprofits, but an above comment mentioned the Red Cross basically putting 375m/500m of donations toward the programs. Honestly, if they send every dollar received straight the beneficiaries, they would have raised significantly less than 500m. Would it be better for the programs to receive 375m/500m or 25m/25m? Sure we don't know how much they would have raised without all the fundraising, but this issue is more nuanced than people think.

EDIT: I read the Red Cross article from NPR, and it appears that example falls under legitimate questioning of the use of funds. My larger point still applies in general though.

wtvanhest2• 7 years ago

When I worked in Boston I organized a company event for habitat for humanity. First year was great, we worked on a house all day, paid HforH somewhere between 1k and 5k (i cannot remember). A year later we returned to the same site. But... the house we worked on the year before wasnt finished yet...

That kind of blue my mind. I always wondered whether the money donated by companies would have been better used to just hire contractors.

gamblor956• 7 years ago

It actually does go to hire contractors. The dirty not-so-hidden secret is that HFH sets aside houses for volunteers to work on.

The majority of HFH houses are actually built by contractors without any volunteers messing shit up.

mikestew2• 7 years ago

I saw what I consider to be the epitome of money-grubbing "charity fun run" about five years ago with the "Ugly Sweater Run". They blatantly advertised that there would be no clock, no results, and it would be "about 5K/3.1 miles". For $85. On a private road that was unlikely to require any permits or even much traffic control (Remlinger Farms, for those familiar with the Seattle/Carnation area). I've run plenty of 5K runs with awards, traffic control, support, timing and placing for $35 (and this old man thinks that's high).

But wait, you might ask, what about the charity? Toys for Tots. Bring your own damned toy, because the organizers sure as hell weren't giving the little shits any toys. None of the money was earmarked for the charity, right into the event organizers' pockets it goes.

That's the most egregious example. Other examples abound to solidify my belief that charity fun runs are a racket. Write a check directly, and go find a run that isn't trying to bullshit you with a coat of "it's for charity".

SamBam2• 7 years ago

Fun runs are probably generally cost-inefficient, and if what you're saying about the Toys for Tots is true, thats terrible, but I don't quite understand how the pricing relates to the story.

with awards, traffic control, support, timing and placing for $35

Surly those must struggle to break even? Wouldn't a higher fee, and, more importantly, nearly-zero costs be exactly what you want for a charity run?

SloopJon• 7 years ago

I did my first timed 5K over the holidays for free through a local parkrun:

https://www.parkrun.us/

Apparently they're sponsored, but I have no idea who sponsored this one.

cbsks• 7 years ago

I have been to a few fun runs that do not support a charity, cost >$40, and ask for volunteers to help pass out bibs, direct traffic, etc.

I never understood why people would volunteer for an event like that. You aren’t supporting anything except the company that is profiting from the run.

alias_neo• 7 years ago

Are there many people playing bridge these days? I'm in my early 30s and was one of only half a dozen members of my school's bridge club (Grammar school, in England), most of our opponents were older folk, we all thoroughly enjoyed match days but I doubt many British schools have bridge clubs, is it popular elsewhere in the world?

stallmanite• 7 years ago

Glad to know my intuitive revulsion at how fake this type of corporate “charity” seems is borne out by the facts. Something always seems off.

Edit: It seems to me that it’s an amazingly potent form of evil to poison the well of charity so that there’s no air/light/goodwill left for those who would legitimately try to help the unfortunate.

capableweb• 7 years ago

Off-topic but I'm curious, what does "Never buy anything in a room with a chandelier" mean? Tried searching everywhere to get some explanation, but the closest hit I get is from Google which is a link to your comment here.

muttled• 7 years ago

If they can afford to take you to a really nice place for a sales meeting, it means the margins are crazy high and you're getting ripped off.

rwmj• 7 years ago

My niece is currently soliciting sponsorship for some kind of charitable visit to a foreign country. As far as I can tell it's simply a holiday. No actual charitable work will be done (it's meant for the children to "experience the world" or something). She, or rather, the donors, have to pay the full cost and at over £3000 it's quite a lot more than a two week package holiday to the same place. I declined to donate.

Daviey• 7 years ago

World Challenge? Yeah.. On sign-up, the children seemed to think the organisation was a charity, which felt a bit more acceptable. The company didn't hide the fact they were for-profit.

To be fair, they are doing more than a simple package holiday offers, but it is still not a cheap expedition.

jancsika• 7 years ago

N=1, of course, but I have had an extremely cynical view of charity events ever since. There appears to be an entire industry built around siphoning away 90%-99% of every dollar adjacent to charity.

Kubernetes appears to be built around siphoning away 90%-99% of my CPU when I tried to use it to manage a 100 item todo list on my Chromebook.

N=1 of course.

klenwell• 7 years ago

There was a great HN comment a few years ago that broke down the "Charitable-Industrial Complex" using The Real Housewives as an example.

I found it:

One thing I've learned from many so-called "philanthropists" is that hosting charity events can be a great status and money making/saving opportunity for those in the business of it. If you've ever watched a "real housewive of ..." episode, those wacky ladies are constantly hosting charity events and provide a pretty good example of how this works:

Full comment here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6113969

shermablanca• 7 years ago

Plenty more examples abound. Even the American Red Cross — raised $500mm in 2015 for Haiti earthquake relief. Used $125mm for internal expenses[0]

[0] https://www.npr.org/2016/06/16/482020436/senators-report-fin...

wooby• 7 years ago

Why the cynical view? People have fun, organizers make money, and a charity makes money. Without the event, nobody has fun, and nobody (including the charity) makes money.

angrymouse• 7 years ago

This brings back memories.

Used to work for an NHS hospital trust.

The chief executive made a rather rash, very public announcement (under peer pressure) that he was going to do a skydive for the hospital charity.

Lots of jokes etc.

But he was going to do it.

Until our chief medical director took him aside and told him about the injury rate and how they actually cost the NHS more.

Though a few people from the charity brought it up, it was politely forgotten about. And he did a walk around the peak district instead

jxramos• 7 years ago

3 questions

    * at what cost
    * compared to what
    * with what hard evidence

At least they figured out the first eventually.

RcouF1uZ4gsC• 7 years ago

I have always found the premise of “run for charity” or “jump for charity” weird. If I thought a cause was worthwhile, I would donate to it. Why does someone running or jumping have anything to do with me donating?

reaperducer2• 7 years ago

Ditto for all the dozens or maybe even hundreds of new charities that are formed each week (at least in the United States).

It seems like instead of having a hundred thousand micro-charities, it would be better if the money were just sent directly to a large charity that already operates at scale and can use the money more efficiently.

Sending $100 to Doctors Without Borders is far more effective than giving $100 to The Dr. Steffy McStethoscope Memorial Fund For People Who Want To Make Themselves Feel Good.

It's like "raising awareness." It doesn't help anyone but the people trying to make themselves feel better about themselves.

raldi• 7 years ago

It seems like instead of having a hundred thousand micro-charities, it would be better if the money were just sent directly to a large charity that already operates at scale and can use the money more efficiently.

We could call it "taxes".

plmu• 7 years ago

It would be even better if there were just and progressive taxes, so that the state can take its responsibility, and charity is not required.

lilyball• 7 years ago

It raises awareness and gets people to donate.

usrusr2• 7 years ago

Same here. The answer is, unsurprisingly, money. It's much easier to get sponsorship for the cost of a run or a jump when the event is also collecting money for charity.

(assuming that the costs are not outright taken from the donations pool, then the reason is still money, but in a much more self-serving way bordering on fraud)

htfu3• 7 years ago

Makes me think of this one time. It was me, and a first timer who'd been convinced by his gf it might cure his fear of heights.

Yada yada yada, he broke both his legs. Something tells me it didn't help much.

Balanceinfinity• 7 years ago

if you start from the assumption that each of us has a finite amount of money we will give to charity and that - one way or another - we will give that amount, then giving to things like fun runs and fancy balls (https://leukemiaball.org/) makes no sense at all (the donation pie is fixed). If, however, these activities increase the pie of actual donations, then holding them makes sense, so long as the increase in the size of the giving pie is not exceeded by the expense of holding these activities.

emmelaich• 7 years ago

After a local epidemic of chuggers ("charity muggers") here there was a good newspaper article on some disreputable charities.

A bit of web searching took me here:

https://thedevilcorp.wordpress.com/

It's very enlightening and alarming!

travisoneill1• 7 years ago

11% injury rate with 60% of those admitted to the hospital! Cost is not the main issue with this!

gojomo• 7 years ago

I've not heard of parachute jumps for charity in the USA. Is it more popular in the UK?

And if so, is it possible the existence of the NHS – making participants & charities somewhat more indifferent to the medical costs – is what's helping the popularity (& resource waste) here, in a classic 'moral hazard' situation?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_hazard

Have UK charities just figured out a way, via a slight nudge to wannabe parachuters, to siphon off some of the value of NHS coverage into their own program funds?

Parachuting for Charity: A 5-year audit (1999)

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