Do homework before giving

                Most people give to charities or specifically athlete’s charities they are expecting the money to go to whatever the foundation stands for or donates to.  Whether that cause being helping fund cancer research, or giving supplies to needy children people like to donate to help out the cause. However, sometimes athlete’s charities are not as they seem. According to this article “Do Homework Before giving” on ESPN.com, many charities do not donate any money at all, in fact 74% of the 115 athlete charities studied fell short of acceptable non-profit standards according to three charity watchdogs. For example, Lamar Odom’s charity which was founded for his mother who passed away from cancer says it donates money for cancer research and underprivileged kids. However, over the eight years the charity has been running it has not donated a single dollar to a cancer entity. Instead the money has gone to funding an AAU basketball team and a tax exempt salary of a Golden State Warrior assistant coach. Even though there are many bad examples of athletes misusing charities, there are still many athletes out there that care about a cause and actually give to the cause the charity stands for. People should still give money to charities, just be careful about which athletes or charities that you give money to.

                I was generally shocked when I first saw this article. I couldn’t believe that so many athletes would misuse something as good as a charity. A non-profit organization that donates money to a cause, and they used it for buying sports cars or to help their business. But after reading this article it does not surprise me that so many athletes go bankrupt after they retire, they make very poor decisions regarding money. The amount of athletes that end up going bankrupt is ridiculous. I hope that none of my favorite athletes are involved in the fake charity game. That is also what is so bad about the players doing this, many of these athletes are role models to children, and when they see the athletes exploit charities and other organizations it really lets down the children that looked up to that player. This article was very well written and used multiple sources very nicely. I hope that the many athletes that actually run their charity how it is supposed to be run continue to do so and touch the lives of many people that need it.

Tim Keown. "Do Homework Before giving." ESPN. ESPN Internet Ventures, 02 Apr. 2013. Web. 08 Apr. 2013.