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by krilly
2340 days ago
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I was actually chatting to some friends about this the other day. I personally would love to go skydiving but I wouldn't get sponsored for it because it isn't actually hard. Unlike running a marathon for instance, it doesn't require any preparation on my part or any superhuman effort, just a lot of cash. I think most people who do feats of endurance for charity (marathons, cycling, mountaineering, etc) would probably like to do it anyway but it's fair to ask for sponsorship money because of the effort involved. |
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An entirely orthogonal question is how event costs are funded: do participants pay out of their own pocket or is it taken from the donations pool? If it's the latter I'd call it borderline charity fraud, no matter if the activity is running, flaggelation, parachuting or smoking weed.
The usual compromise, I think, is clear separation between sponsors (who fund the event) and donors (whose money is given to charity with zero cut or expenses deduction). It's hard to find something to criticize in that model, if someone wants to sponsor entertainment, fine. If tens of thousands of sponsorship dollars yield tens of donation dollars, still fine: the assumption that the tens of thousands would have been donated otherwise cannot be made.
(it still might get muddy if that sponsorship somehow gets different tax treatment than other business expenses or if the main beneficiary of those costs, either as participant or as organizer, is the CEO or something like that but that's totally besides the question of parachuting vs endurance)