New York Road Runners paid only $494,000 to charity last year

Who reads NY Post?

Anyway:

1. The mission of NYRR is to provide competitive and affordable running races in the NYC area

2. Many of the races are benefiting charities in non financial ways; marketing/visibility. E.g. Race against colon cancer etc.

3. How much money has the NY Post given to charity last year and how much money does their owner (Rupert Murdoch) make? He is worth more than 8 billion dollars.

So how much money does the Red Cross give to charity each year?

The idea of being a non-profit is that you use the money you receive for your own non-profit purposes, not channel the money into other non-profits.

If you look at the comments to the Post story, the Post's moronic Post readers (is that redundant?) understand the Post's story to mean that the NYRR only spent $494,000 on program expenses.

This is completely untrue. Check out Charity Navigator for a real evaluation of how NYRR compares as a non-profit-

http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=13314

What the Post is talking about is how much money the NYRR gave away to other non-profits, not how much they spent on their own programs.

It looks like I'm going to have to write a column defending the NYRR as threads like this keep popping up. In my mind, they should run every road race in the US.You are aware they are a non-profit, right?They are a non profit whose goal is to promote distance running and fitness - they do that incredibly well!! Their goal isn't to give away money to various charities - but tens of millions is given away at their races by runners for those causes.That is something you seemingly don't understand and something the Post tried to bury at the end. In case you didn't read the whole article, please read this as it's key:

NY post wrote:

In its mission statement, NYRR doesn’t claim to be set up as a fund-raising charity, saying that its goal is to promote distance running and fitness and that it dedicates its revenues to those purposes

The Post makes it sound like the NYRR paying the Armory to rent the track is a scandal - or giving money to the World Marathon majors. It also makes it sound like "weekly races and adult- and youth-running programs" aren't charitable endeavors.

You really better watch what you are asking for. It sounds like the Post wants to turn all races/running organizations into pure charity endeavors - so there goes the entire sport!!! We might end up with a sport where any money spent on pros is viewed as a "non-charity" scandal.

The real scandal is the Post's reporting on this.

The NFL took in 9.5 billion dollars in revenue last year. They gave $1 million of that to Hurricane Sandy - that's .000105 of their revenue - or barely .01%. That NYRR also gave $1 million and they bring in only 53.8 million so they donated at 176 times the rate of the NFL. So the NYRR's donation was the equivalent of the NFL giving $176 million to Hurricane Sandy, and yet you are upset with the NYRR?

One last point - do you really think that the head of organization that has $50 + million in revenues shouldn't make $500k in New York? Good luck getting someone qualified to do it. Roger Goodell makes $20 million for comparison's sake.

rojo wrote:

do you really think that the head of organization that has $50 + million in revenues shouldn't make $500k in New York? Good luck getting someone qualified to do it.

Right on. Even the NYRR haven't found someone qualified for this position yet for 500k.

Gimme a break wrote:

So how much money does the Red Cross give to charity each year?

The idea of being a non-profit is that you use the money you receive for your own non-profit purposes, not channel the money into other non-profits.

This. I am one of the people who didn't like the way NYRR handled the marathon cancellation, but the criticism the OP presents is silly. A non-profit is supposed to use its money to further its cause. The only time it makes sense for a non-profit to donate money to another non-profit is when the donator lacks the capacity to undertake some task vital to its own mission and instead wants to give money to another non-profit that does have the capacity. A neighborhood improvement group that lacks financial expertise might donate money to a local company that can provide certain types of business loans that will improve the local economy, for example. But if NYRR can carry out all their own needs in-house, why would they donate money?

Rojo, GET REAL. The NYRRC does nothing more for running than John Gotti did for Ozone Park, New York.

rojo wrote:

One last point - do you really think that the head of organization that has $50 + million in revenues shouldn't make $500k

Good luck getting someone qualified to do it.

That's exactly what I think. There are at least 50,000 people within the five boroughs that could do that job for less. Fred Lebow, who built that non-profit sham did it.

It's call "non-profit" for a reason.

Man, rojo, your fawning over Mary and the NYRR is obnoxious and starting to border on strange.

You follow posts about her like a little kid with a bad case of puppy love.

If you want to do it in your private life I guess it's OK, but you should think of posting under another name (which you probably do) to be less creepy.

You run the place runners go to hang out online, don't ruin it by acting like an employee or groupie of Mary.

Enough already wrote:

You run the place runners go to hang out online, don't ruin it by acting like an employee or groupie of Mary.

I agree. NYRR buys advertising space here, we all know that is the reason the brojos defend NYRR/Mary.

Nutella1 wrote:

I agree. NYRR buys advertising space here, we all know that is the reason the brojos defend NYRR/Mary.

If you had any clue how Goggle Ads work, you would know that no one buys advertising space on LR.

you must be dumb wrote:

If you had any clue how Goggle Ads work, you would know that no one buys advertising space on LR.

As a matter of fact, I do. I am not talking about the top banners. Talking about live broadcasting of press conferences, opups/popovers etc.

Nutella1 wrote:

As a matter of fact, I do. I am not talking about the top banners. Talking about live broadcasting of press conferences, opups/popovers etc.

Just when you thing you've seen everything, someone complains that there is too much coverage of running on this site . . .

Citizen Runner wrote:

Just when you thing you've seen everything, someone complains that there is too much coverage of running on this site . . .

Please tell me, exactly where did Citizen Runner or anyone else complain about running coverage on this site?

Where?

malmo wrote:

Rojo, GET REAL. The NYRRC does nothing more for running than John Gotti did for Ozone Park, New York.

rojo wrote:

One last point - do you really think that the head of organization that has $50 + million in revenues shouldn't make $500k

Good luck getting someone qualified to do it.

That's exactly what I think. There are at least 50,000 people within the five boroughs that could do that job for less. Fred Lebow, who built that non-profit sham did it.

It's call "non-profit" for a reason.

Malnope, that's funny. There are probably about 100 in the US who are skilled and qualified enough, less who would do it, and even less who move to NYC to do it for $500K. There are many more that could be Mary's understudy for a few years, make less, etc. It's actually an issue worth discussing, because I see nobody within the organization right now who is ready to step in and replace Mary.

Well, maybe so, but Mary and the gang at NYRR sure aren't doing a good job of advocating for themselves and getting their story out. The news media may be ganging up on them but they've taken a bunker mentality approach. Many questions, no answers.

Rojo, since the media has mentioned Letsrun.com as a forum for disgruntled runners and members, any chance you can get Mary on record to respond to the complaints noted here and elsewhere? She still has not fully explained her internal thinking on the issue of cancelling the marathon.

As for snarky comments about the NY Post, their story may be incomplete, but they're not the only outlet that has reported on the marathon bungling. The PR for NYRR and their handling of the marathon has been awful up to this point. If they had gotten out ahead of the story they could have tamped down some of the blowback seen here and elsewhere.

Do you think this one incident, the hurricane cancellation, makes Mary unfit to run NYRR? How long has she been leading the organization? Has it grown? Has incoming money and membership gone up or down? Is running more or less visible? Is she growing the organization?

I agree that the handling of the marathon could have been better this year but in mind big deal. There was a freaking hurricane just days before the race for goodness' sake.

Mary gets a slap on the wrist and learns an important lesson, in my book.

That's exactly what I think. There are at least 50,000 people within the five boroughs that could do that job for less.

And I'm one of them. I would do that job for $499,000.

The article also incorrectly reported that the NYRR pays ING $15 million a year. It should have read ING pays NYRR $15 million a year but that wouldn't be news even though it is factually correct.

Fact Checker wrote:

The article also incorrectly reported that the NYRR pays ING $15 million a year. It should have read ING pays NYRR $15 million a year but that wouldn't be news even though it is factually correct.

Didn't expect anything else from NYPOST. Yes, it would be quite surprising if NYRR paid $15 Million to ING so they advertise for the Marathon.