[usrusr]

Why would doing a marathon and pretending to do it for other reasons than doing a marathon be any different? The only reason separating endurance sports efforts "for charity" from a hypothetical "candy crush for charity" or "Netflix binge for charity" is that the athletic efforts apparently impress some potential donors. If the same is true for courage dares like fixed line parachuting then so be it.

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)