That time of year again

 It's getting to be that time of year again.  Cancer season.  In the NFL it's breast cancer awareness.  In baseball you see their Stand Up To Cancer ads.  Every fraternity and sorority on campus wants to raise more money than the others.  For charity.  And it's all wrong.  Here's why.

 Cancer is a terrible thing, and lots of money should be spent on the research and development of effective treatments, cures, and prevention.  And it turns out, lots is: every year, the National Institutes of Health - i.e. The Government - gives out some.  More accurately, around $5,700,000,000.00.  Each year.  And people try to supplement this by asking me if I'd like to donate a dollar for some other charity to research a cure for cancer.

 And the answer is no.  You want to know the most effective way you as a citizen or as a charity can fight cancer?  Talk to Congress.  Tell them that more needs to be done.  Convince them to raise funding for cancer research.  How much do you think would need to be spent lobbying Congress to get a permanent 1% - just 1% - increase in research grants?  Because that's the same thing as fundraising $57 million every year.

 Let's look at the big boys in the game: The American Cancer Society raised about $900 million last year.  This cost them about $200 million in fundraising expenses.  How much do you think that $200 million worth of lobbying would convince Congress to raise funding by?  10%?  Then you've just raised $570 million every year.  Charities have to come back each year and ask people to give again.

 So that's my central complaint: giving money to charities to support research has no multiplier effect; convincing Congress does.  Because Congress gets to write into the bill how long the increase in funding lasts.

UPDATE: This was on my shopping cart today:

They're everywhere.  And I realize I left out another important reason to avoid using charity: it's tax deductible.  That's added waste; essentially we're paying them money to invest in research, instead of doing it ourselves.  When, say, a dollar is donated to charity for research, if it all goes into research (it doesn't), the government gives say 10 cents away to subsidize it.  Do that for all $900 million that the ACS raised and that's $90 million sent to the donors that could otherwise have been given in research grants.