kny wrote:

Just out of curiosity, do you think that people buy charity slots at 2x the price because of all the great marketing and promotional work that IM Foundation does, and not because the regular entries have sold out and charity slots are the only means of entry?

I agree with this. I think most people see it as tiered pricing, rather than a charitable endeavour. There is lots of information below that I've Google-Fu'd. It gets more interesting towards the bottom.

The standard for large sporting events will give spots to charities and then as a charity participant you sign up to raise X amount of money that you know goes straight to the charity. Most charities you can find out a decent level of information about what the money went on (expenses vs. charitable projects, etc), but I'm struggling to find info on IM Foundation.

Their website states they had given $100k to Kailua-Kona projects in 2012, and lists 26 charities, so that would be about $4k per charity which is pretty miserly and not going to make a difference to most of these organisations (except maybe the canoe clubs). I was there for 6 months and asked loads of people about WTC/Ironman and everyone was unanimous that they do little/nothing. I suspect it is an arrangement (explicit or implicit) that the local economy makes lots of money during the World Champs and this is enough for them to want to host it each year, keep the roads in pristine condition, etc.

Anyway, back to the $100k. In 2011 there were 4 ebay auction spots for the champs, with winning bids ranging from $45-60k. Let's pick the bottom number to underestimate and that is already $180k. If you paid someone $80k to list the spots on eBay and then put them in the starting list, then there's the $100k right there. WTC is still a small enough organisation that it's costs for a Ironman Foundation shouldn't be huge (it's not like they're the Red Cross, GreenPeace, etc).

Their news page is pretty terrible. Only one of the links works and it is to an external site. All the other links do not. I can't find any good information at all so it seems they are working in a vacuum, and at best don't feel the need to publicise their spending.

The other interesting figure is $18million in donations between 2003-2012.

More interesting points:
They've raised >$1million from crowdrise.
Guidestar shows their income/expenses based on IMF's 990 filing. Page 4 is the most informative:
- Their total assets grew at a healthy rate between 2011-2012 (from 2.7MM to 4.5MM)
- This goal is not uncommon amongst charities as growing assets allows you to earn interest and provides a buffer between spendings and earnings.
- They state they spent $18MM between 2003-2012 = $2MM year. So their assets would cover their donations for another 2 years (assuming they still get income to cover their expenses).
Give.com says their income is $2.3MM and assets are $5.2MM. Guidestar doesn't appear to have any information on 2013, and Give doesn't provide it's source unfortunately.
FoundationCenter appears to corroborate GuideStar, and also is missing 2013 990 filings information.
Ironman Foundations fiscal year runs from Jan 1st to Dec 31st. Their 2013 990 Filing would have been May 15th (rules for filing date here).
It lists their 2012 expenses as $572k and income as $1MM putting it well within the legal bounds of calling itself a charity.

So in my conclusion I don't think they are breaking any laws or anything, but it would be great to get more transparency on what they're doing with the money. I'm happy to approach them for information on this if people are interested. As a fairly young organisation it seems sensible to build an assets pot because then you can start to do good things with the interest and income of the fund, rather than push it straight out and leave the future of the charity as uncertain. Note that the name, email and telephone number of the executive director is public information but i won't post it here.

There are two ironman 501 registered charities but I was only looking at the latter:

26-1716311Ironman for KidsSan AntonioTXUnited StatesPC





65-1172979The Ironman Foundation Inc.TampaFLUnited StatesPC

For more information on charities and their 990 Filings click here.