Other awards:
Cancer Charities
URL: http://www.cancercharities.com/
ALERT!
Summary
CancerCharities.com lists 19 member charities. The site says all funds raised are split equally amongst members, and that members are "contacted directly" as part of the procedure to become a member.
Nine of the 19 listed charities deny receiving funding from CancerCharities.com, and several of those seven deny ever having been contacted or informed about being listed as members. An additional charity is investigating the matter, but has not confirmed whether or not they were aware of being listed, or if they have received funds. The nine confirmed charities who have not received funds are:
- Billy's Foundation
- The Cancer Club
- Candlelighters of Southwest Florida
- Hereditary Colon Cancer Association (HCCA)
- The Babylon Breast Cancer Coalition
- The Prostate Cancer Charity
- Link to Life
- Connecticut Sports Foundation
- CONVERSATIONS! The International Ovarian Cancer Connection
A sponsor has said that his company has not been billed for months.
Email to CancerCharities.com has not been answered thusfar.
Regular updates are posted below. Please be sure to use your refresh/reload button on this page to make sure you are seeing the most current version. In case anyone is wondering, there are no counters or ads or anything that will be artificially inflated by refreshing the page.
Original report
In less than 12 hours since I contacted most of the "member charities" at this site (which, according to the site, all receive an equal portion of proceeds), two supposed beneficiaries have contacted me to say that they have not received funds:
Karen L. Graham, Chairperson and President of Billy's Foundation said in an email that her organization is not and has never been a member of CancerCharities.com, nor has the organization received funding, quarterly reports, or other information from CancerCharities.com. She said she will be turning the matter over to the foundation's attorneys.
Christine Clifford, President and CEO of The Cancer Club said in an email that her organization also never received funds from CancerCharities.com, despite numerous phone calls and emails. She said she has asked CancerCharities.com to remove her site from their list, but this request has also gone unanswered.
I did find that two of the listed "members" had indications on their site that they were receiving money from CancerCharities.com:
- Center of Hope at Noble House's Directory of Related Links provides a link to CancerCharities.com which says: "By visiting this site and clicking on the donation page, advertisers' fees are donated to the listed cancer charities of which Center of Hope is one!"
- Hope (Wessex Medical Trust)'s Ways to Help page says "You can also help Hope by... making a free on-line donation to Hope by visiting the cancercharities.com web-site."
It remains to be seen if any of the other members I emailed in the past several hours also respond negatively. I will alert CancerCharities.com to these accusations on the chance that there has been a misunderstanding, but at the moment I consider the replies I have received to be indicative of a potential serious problem with CancerCharities.com.
I have not printed the full text of the emails because I believe that is a breach of ethics, as I have not yet requested permission (I was hurrying to post this information). If Ms. Graham or Ms. Clifford grant me permission to print their email here, I shall.
More updates will be posted as necessary.
Update: 8:00 pm PDT, May 29, 2001
As I slept (I keep irregular hours), more denials of payment came in. Here are the latest comments:
Klair M. Snellbaker, Executive Director of Candlelighters of Southwest Florida said Candlelighters has never received donations from CancerCharities.com.
The Public Relations Team of Cancer Education Awareness and Research said they are investigating the matter, and removing the Cancercharities.com banner from their site during the investigation. They did not specify why or what they are investigating.
I sent an email to CancerCharities.com at 9:39 am, inviting them to respond to the allegations. No response has yet been received. I also posted notice of the Alert at The Hunger Site Club, a discussion board regarding one-click donation sites.
At this time, I am saving the source code and pages from parts of CancerCharities.com, including the member list. I will store these files as evidence of who was on the member list at the time the files were saved, should the list be changed later. I encourage any "member" who feels that CancerCharities.com should not be listing their organization to do likewise, and keep copies of all pertinent documents and communications.
In light of these additions, I am going to send a new email out to all "members" and sponsors of CancerCharities.com to inform them of this Alert, as well as to any of the directories of One-Click sites I know of that list CancerCharities.com. When the email has been sent, I will post a copy of it here in the next update.
Update: 2:45 am PDT, May 30, 2001
I did some research and compiled a list of all of CancerCharities.com's "members," including Hereditary Colon Cancer Association (HCCA), which had no website listed on CancerCharities.com and an invalid email address. Similarly, I listed all of the current and past sponsors, leaving out only the individual sponsors who had no contact information. I also went through my links page and checked all of the directories listed there to see which ones had CancerCharities.com listed.
After compiling this large mailing list, I sent the following email:
-----Original Message-----
From: Kimberly Chapman [mailto:kacee@lvcm.com]
Sent: Wednesday, May 30, 2001 2:43 AM
To: mark@prostatefoundation.org; angelflightsamaritans@erols.com; bbccest1993@aol.com; email@basecampccf.com; zebra@bfmelanoma.com; cancer@vsnl.com; publicrelations@cear.org.uk; Candlelighters@usacomputers.net; info@center-of-hope.org; christine@cancerclub.com; info@sportsfoundation.org; djmelancon@tcac.net; CHMelancon@aol.com; info@hereditarycc.org; webmaster@hope.org.uk; hospamc.jau@netsite.com; campaign@prostate-cancer.org.uk; feedback@netnanny.com; goodbooks@healthpress.com; alliances@xdrive.com; yagain@wt.net; jandistar@yahoo.com; brendan@brendanmcdowell.com; info@wigsite.com; Fit4Life@SunValley.net; dino@tripadvice.com; support@ultimateresourcesite.com; webmaster@quickdonations.com; toby@donationjunction.com; pamelad@mindless.com; news@enn.com; feedback@totallyawesomestuff.com; CountryWishes4U@aol.com; GIVACLICK@almudo.com; YesWorks@lanset.com; shallah@crosswinds.net
Subject: CancerCharities.com Alert from One Click Charity CheckHello,
This email is notification of an Alert regarding CancerCharities.com.
During the review process at One Click Charity Check, it was revealed that some of the "members" listed at CancerCharities.com deny having been members at all or having received funds from CancerCharities.com.
CancerCharities.com has been emailed for comment, but has not yet responded. One of the "members" has said her repeated attempts at communication with CancerCharities.com to have her organization removed have been met with silence, so it is possible that no one is answering emails from the site anymore.
It is possible that all of this is a misunderstanding, and that CancerCharities.com is in fact operating above board. One Click Charity Check is not prepared to declare that CancerCharities.com is guilty of anything, but there is sufficient mounting evidence to warrant warning all "members," sponsors, and known directories that list CancerCharities.com that this site has had serious allegations made against it by listed "members." (The list of "members" is at http://www.cancercharities.com/affiliatedorganizations.htm )
If your organization has indeed received funds from CancerCharities.com and you would like to speak in their defense, please do so. This is an effort at bringing truth to light; not to defame any given site. If you would like your message quoted directly, please specify so, as it is unethical to reprint email without permission.
One Click Charity Check is starting a mailing list for those who are interested in future updates regarding this situation. Please respond to this email if you are interested in being placed on a mailing list regarding CancerCharities.com. This will NOT be an automated list, so please specify that you'd like to be on the list if you reply. I will only add those who explicitly request it. Please be assured that this list will deal only with this matter, and you will not receive any extraneous emails unless you engage in a separate conversation with One Click Charity Check.
If you do not wish to be emailed but you do wish to see the latest information regarding this matter, there is an Alert page here: http://kimberlychapman.com/charitycheck/cancercharities.html
One Click Charity Check apologizes sincerely if this matter does not interest you, but it was decided that it was better to inform as many people as possible who are connected to CancerCharities.com.
Thank you all for your charitable efforts.
Kimberly Chapman, One-Click Charity Check
http://kimberlychapman.com/charitycheck/charitycheck.htmlPS: This was not blind carbon copied as part of an effort to be forthright in every aspect of this situation. All email addresses were found on publicly available websites.
There has still been no response from CancerCharities.com. I have now saved what I believe are the pertinent pages of CancerCharities.com, so if they are changed later, I can produce copies of how they appeared today.
Within minutes of sending the above email, a few bounces came back, mostly from past sponsors. I will not pursue those addresses further.
If readers know of anyone else who should be informed about this Alert, please feel free to forward the URL, but PLEASE DO NOT SPAM PEOPLE!
As stated in the email, if anyone has any information that can speak in CancerCharities.com's favour, please let me know at charitycheck@kimberlychapman.com. Be specific, and if you wish your email to be quoted directly, be sure to include permission for me to do so.
It is still my hope that this will prove to be a colossal misunderstanding. If it escalates much further, however, I will have to consider whether or not to report this to The Internet Fraud Complaint Center and/or to The Charitable Institutions division of the New York State Attoney General's Office, since CancerCharities.com lists its address as being in New York state. If someone else chooses to report it, feel free to include this Alert in your report. If requested by authorities, I will turn over copies of all communications and documents related to this matter. Should I decide to make a report myself, that will be mentioned in a future update.
Update: 1:15 am PDT, May 31, 2001
Other than people responding to confirm they wish to be on the mailing list, the email has slowed down on this issue. However, there is now another dissenting "member":
Kathy Kersey, Director of Operations for Hereditary Colon Cancer Association (HCCA) said in an email, "Hereditary Colon Cancer Association has received no funds from CancerCharities.com. You have permission to quote or use this e-mail message."
So of 19 listed "members," four (21%) have stated at least one of the following:
- That they have never heard of CancerCharities.com;
- That they were unaware that they were listed as members of CancerCharities.com;
- That they have tried to remove themselves as members;
- And/or that they have not ever received funds from CancerCharities.com.
There is also one group that is investigating the matter, but since it wasn't specified what they were investigating, I won't include them with the dissenters.
While this still could be a misunderstanding, it is growing more difficult to give CancerCharities.com the benefit of the doubt. There has still been no response from CancerCharities.com. Christine Clifford offered to share a contact phone number with me, but I declined at this time. As I said in my reply to her, should this matter reach a point where personal calls become a consideration, I'd rather hand the matter over to The Internet Fraud Complaint Center. I am not planning to file a report yet because I'm still hoping someone will respond to acknowledge that they did receive funding or that the matter will otherwise be cleared up.
Update: 9:25 am PDT, May 31, 2001
Another organization says they have not received funds, bringing the total to five of 19:
Debbie from The Babylon Breast Cancer Coalition emailed to say that her organization was approached by CancerCharities.com and agreed to be listed, but has never received a donation from the site.
Karen Graham suggested that I send another email to CancerCharities.com and give them a deadline to respond, and then report the situation to authorities if there is no response in the set time. I think that's a good idea, and I plan to do that. I will send an email later today and give CancerCharities.com until next Friday to respond.
Meanwhile, all reports from concerned parties are still welcome! Please remember to specify if you want your email quoted directly.
Update: 9:45 am PDT, June 1, 2001
John Livingston from Young Again Nutrients, a company still listed as a sponsor on the Thank You page, said his company is indeed a sponsor but has not received any billing or communication from CancerCharities.com in months. He said he suspects the site is no longer being maintained.
And another organization said they didn't know they were a member, nor have they received funds, bringing the total to six of 19 (32%). I still have not had even one organization say that they have ever received funding from CancerCharities.com.
Helen Cochrane, Fundraising Events & Projects Officer for The Prostate Cancer Charity said her organization was not aware that they were members of CancerCharities.com, nor have they received any monies.
It was expressed in an email to me (I will not say from whom) that I should not be so "paranoid," and I should instead endeavour to "support" CancerCharities.com. I wish to make it perfectly clear that at no time have I declared any guilty verdicts against CancerCharities.com. While there is suspicious evidence that I feel is worth noting to concerned parties, I have hoped throughout this situation that it would be resolved as a misunderstanding. I have suggested that some elements of the situation indicate that perhaps the site is no longer being maintained, and that the fact that organizations were signed up without their knowledge, in conflict with the sign-up process posted by CancerCharities.com, is suspicious. These suggestions, however, are not allegations of guilt, and should not be construed as such.
The suggestion of reporting this case to an authority was not intended to imply that CancerCharities.com is guilty of the crimes dealt with by said authorities. I believe firmly in the concept of "innocent until proven guilty," and sincerely hope that authorities still manage to apply that principle to their investigations. Just because a person or organization is worthy of examination by an authority, that does not indicate guilt; at least, it shouldn't.
As to supporting CancerCharities.com, I have tried to do that. Before discovering the problems detailed here, I sent a friendly email to CancerCharities.com indicating some broken/changed links. After the problems started to become apparent, I emailed them again to invite a fair response. I don't know what else I'm expected to do to "support" this organization.
I have sent a formal request for CancerCharities.com's reply, as mentioned in the last update. Here is what it said:
-----Original Message-----
From: Kimberly Chapman [mailto:kacee@lvcm.com]
Sent: Friday, June 01, 2001 9:43 AM
To: suggestions@cancercharities.com
Subject: Formal Request For ReplyDear CancerCharities.com,
Over the past few days, I have received a number of emails from organizations that you list as members. Some of these emails deny ever knowing about your site or agreeing to be members. All of them thusfar have denied ever receiving monies from your site.
One of your current sponsors has also emailed to say that they have not heard from you or been billed by you in months.
The details of what has been said thusfar can be found here: http://kimberlychapman.com/charitycheck/cancercharities.html
I have previously sent an email inviting your response to these allegations. I have received no reply.
I am requesting that someone from your organization reply to this email by 5:00 pm PDT, Friday June 8, 2001 to supply your response. If I have not received a response by that time and if no member organization has by that time acknowledged that they have received funding from your site, I will turn this matter over to The Internet Fraud Complaint Center. While it is my sincere hope that your site has not engaged in any fraudulent activity, I lack the means and right to properly investigate the matter, and thus I will leave it the hands of the designated government authority.
Kimberly Chapman, One-Click Charity Check
http://kimberlychapman.com/charitycheck/charitycheck.html
Update: 8:00 am PDT, June 3, 2001
Another organization says they have not received funds, bringing the total to seven of 19 (37%):
Sharyn Woods from Link to Life, said her organization has not received funding from Cancercharities.com. She said she hopes the site will work someday, but is skeptical.
No reply yet from CancerCharities.com.
At this time, I am willing to state the person/organization behind the email calling me "paranoid," as mentioned above. I do so in response to the fact that this person is now sending me abusive email after a request to stop, with a warning accompanying the request that further abusive email would be made public. Here is the email I received this morning, in it's entirety:
-----Original Message-----
From: John Livingston [mailto:yagain@wt.net]
Sent: Sunday, June 03, 2001 8:08 AM
To: kimberly@kimberlychapman.com
Subject: RE: CancerCharities.com Alert from One Click Charity CheckHi,
You are one screwed up, nosy, supercilious bitch! Of that, I am sure, all can agree. Stop mucking around in affairs that are not of your concern. By the way, I really enjoy exposing fools like you, so don't give me an excuse to put you on THE LIST.
John
Cutting-Edge Natural Health Treatments for Weight Loss, Prostate, Arthritis, Osteoporosis, Hormone Problems, and Many More. Phone: 877-205-0040
http://www.youngagain2000.com
Mailto:yagain@wt.net-----Original Message-----
From: Kimberly Chapman [mailto:kacee@lvcm.com]
Sent: Saturday, June 02, 2001 9:22 AM
To: yagain@wt.net
Subject: RE: CancerCharities.com Alert from One Click Charity Check> Hi, Super Sleuth
>
> Well, if you say the originators are acting fraudulently, then why have they
> not asked us sponsors for money or payment? I think it nothing but anPoint out the instance where I've said they're acting fraudulently.
> abandoned project launched with good intentions. Anyway, we agreed to pay by
> the click thru and my logs show very little indeed, so I think your
> charities have only "lost" a few cups of coffee at best.The donation totals page lists totals of over $3000. That's about $160 per organization, and some of them are small organization.
> Anyway, if you cannot wake the people who launched it, the project will die
> when they do not pay their hosting fees.
>
> Hope you get a response as I thought it a good idea from the start.
>
> As for you, I guess you figured out I just don't care for nosy,
> self-appointed "do-gooders" with lots to make baseless accusations against
> people they do not even know.
Sir, you're the only one making baseless accusations. You're also the only one resorting to insults.
I request that if you can't refrain from this abusive tone and insults, that you please do not contact me again. If you do, I will indicate on the page that I am receiving insulting email from your organization.
Kimberly Chapman, One-Click Charity Check
http://kimberlychapman.com/charitycheck/charitycheck.html
I do not know what "the list" is, nor do I care to investigate. However, it appears to be a threat of some sort, and should the abusive communications continue, I fully intend to report them to the police. I will not be further responding to Mr. Livingston myself.
Update: June 8, 2001
Another organization says they have not received funds, bringing the total to eight of 19 (42%):
Cathy Malin from Connecticut Sports Foundation, said her organization has not received any promised funds.
Mr. Livingtson is continuing his threats (new part quoted only, rest of the message repeats previous message):
-----Original Message-----
From: John Livingston [mailto:yagain@wt.net]
Sent: Sunday, June 03, 2001 10:15 AM
To: kimberly@kimberlychapman.com
Subject: RE: CancerCharities.com Alert from One Click Charity Check
Hi, Again,
It appears you are a really nasty as well as nosy little woman. The fact you take offense at sincere criticism demonstrates your intent is malicious. That you would actually refuse to admit that you accused them of fraud indicates you are a liar. A plain reading of the intent and content of your message to me clearly indicates you are accusing them of fraudulent activities.
Post whatever you wish concerning my criticism of your misguided vigilantism, and then wait for the response. I promise a response 1000X more effective than whatever you may dream up. Please lay off these people whoever they may be and let them fade away in peace.
Cutting-Edge Natural Health Treatments for Weight Loss, Prostate, Arthritis, Osteoporosis, Hormone Problems, and Many More. Phone: 877-205-0040
http://www.youngagain2000.com
Mailto:yagain@wt.net
As stated before, I will not be responding personally to any further communications by Mr. Livingston.
As of today, this entire matter, including Mr. Livingston's threats, have been reported to The Internet Fraud Complaint Center. I have submitted a full report, including a list of all of the charities listed as members, all listed sponsors, etc. I have spelled out exactly what a one-click, free donation site does. I have offered copies of all relevant documents that I have been saving. I also quoted the threatening portions of Mr. Livingston's emails, and provided the IFCC with his contact information.
I'm sure anything nasty that happens to me now will lead the authorities to a clear suspect.
I encourage all of the affected charities to submit their own complaint through The Internet Fraud Complaint Center. Originally, I had planned to share the case number here, but it comes with a password and I am not sure whether or not this could allow people to view my contact information. It is probably best for charities to make their own reports, and reference the fact that I have made a report as well. If anyone does make a report and wishes me to post here that they have done so, email me and let me know.
Sponsors may also wish to submit complaints, since the money they have paid does not seem to have gone where they expected it to.
I will only continue updates after this for significant information. Further vague harassments will not be posted unless they're part of a larger update with more relevant information. Although I have filed a complaint, I am still eager to hear from anyone exonerating CancerCharities.com. All updates will also be copied to the IFCC report.
Thanks to everyone who has emailed me in support.
Update: 12:30 am, June 27
Sorry for the long pause since the last update. My motherboard died unexpectedly, causing significant delays in all portions of this site. All of my email was trapped until I got another copy of the email program to extract it.
Nothing yet as to my report to The Internet Fraud Complaint Center, but another charity has confirmed that it has not received funds from CancerCharities.com:
Both Donald and Cindy Melancon from CONVERSATIONS! The International Ovarian Cancer Connection confirmed that their organization has not received money from CancerCharities.com. Cindy added that she has not even heard of the site, indicating that they did not know they were members.