The 'charity' bike ride where no money goes to charity!

Marie Curie Cancer Care Etape Pennines.

Don’t you just hate company’s like this!

BHF say that none of the entry fee from the L2B goes to the charity as well.

Well, no, the idea is that the entry fee covers the event costs and then you get sponsored to raise money for the charity.

[edit]alright, I’ve just read the article, that does seem a bit iffy

In previous years, Macmillan Cancer relief published figures about how much they had raised through the Etape Caledonia. It was a significant amount.

I don’t see how any charity would allow themselves to be associated with such an event if they weren’t going to gain from it.

I am, therefore, calling the Guardian report “misleading”.

I rode the Etape Caledonia a couple of years ago for Macmillan and raised a fair chunk of money, i’ve also ridden it another couple of times just on the regular entry. My decision to ride wasn’t taken due to the charity aspect but due to the closed roads nature of the event. It is a bit expensive but i dont grudge paying it compared to the price of other sportives.

I dont think it is strictly true about the other events mentioned that all the entry fee goes to the charity. The Trossachs Ton and Glasgow 100 are both Action Medical Research rides and to enter either you need to pay a minimum of £50 – the fees the event organisation take on that is about £30 or so. Like Macmillan Action Medical are a good charity that i’d be happy to donate to and the events are well organised (I rode the Trossachs Ton a couple of years ago) but frankly im not spending £50 on a sportive which doesnt have something a bit special to it like closed roads when there are other charity events like the Drumlanrig Tearfund challenge where all of the entry fee goes to the charity in question.

Its not like the Drumlanrig event is a basic event either – good route, great cakes, well signed, feed stations, motorcycle marshals, free photographs, parking, toilets and so on. It is really well organised and the only thing it doesnt have is chip timing (it does have manual timing)

Druidh could you be more precise on what you think may be misleading as they appear to have quoted the organisers and the charities….the only unknown was police costs.

Charity partner Macmillan Cancer Support, who had over 1500 fundraisers participating in the 2011 event, confirmed that their fundraising total for 2011 had already reached £230,000, taking the total raised by the charity’s association with the event to £1.13 million. With fundraising money still coming in over the next two months the final figure is expected to climb further.

Tris Jones, Biking Events Coordinator for Macmillan, said “Macmillan Cancer Support is delighted at the level of support for this year’s Etape Caledonia. To date we have raised over £1.13 million for people affected by cancer. This incredible total will be used to continue providing our wide range of services to help not only people affected by cancer, but everyone their cancer has an impact on, from partners, to children, to friends and carers. We are extremely grateful to everyone for their support and hard work so, from Macmillan: Thank You.”
So, something doesn’t add up…

The charity angle to the Etape Caledonia was an add on.. It helped deflect some of the anti-closed roads nutters’ PR. Nobody I know does the event as a (primarily) charity ride. I doubt the guys in the peletons whizzing along the side of the Lochs at 25mph give a toss about the charity aspect. The Guardian story only has value if people really are entering it in order to raise money. I think most are not.

A bit like the clic 24 on Mendip many people just paid the 30 quid to race rather than raise money for the charity .Even that was hardly worth it cos you can ride round that part of Mendip anytime

I know of a bike ride where every single penny goes to the charity:

http://www.justgiving.com/stannsbigbikeride

If he’s using just giving then every single penny is not going to charity.

Well, the hospice got just over £1500 with gift aid included and as the vast majority of it was donated by the members of this forum, I’ll take this opportunity to say a massive thank you again to everybody who donated and my apologies if I misled anybody (without intent) in not realising that Just Giving got some of the money.

Unless there is an explicit statement that states “x” % goes the charity I would assume the organiser keeps all the entry fees for costs and profit and that hey expect you to separately get sponsorship/ donate to the named charity

If they don’t want to tell you what the charity share of an entry fee is Iwould assume it’s very low – zero. Otherwise they would be using it as part of the advertising

my apologies if I misled anybody (without intent) in not realising that Just Giving got some of the money.

My understanding is they take a % from the gift aid that they recover.

It’s a price worth paying for the ease it makes of raising money. I raised about £3000 (before gift aid) last year on the dartmoor classic and wouldn’t have got anywhere near that level raising money the traditional ways, or been able to easily reclaim the gift aid.

And I paid my own entry fee.

Road.CC covered this a while back

http://road.cc/content/blog/71344-etape-caledonia-where-does-money-go