American Breast Cancer Foundation: A Public Good?

The company I chose was the American Breast Cancer Foundation, whose claim is to “provide financial assistance for breast cancer screenings and diagnostic tests for uninsured and undeserved individuals, regardless of age or gender.” After a single glance at the ABCF website, it seems immediately deserving of a public good title, rampant with smiling faces in white lab coats. It is a non-profit organization, catered towards providing adequate care to all people, regardless of their socioeconomic status. However, this company is also rooted in promoting cancer “awareness”. Though probably intentionally pure, this idea causes people to pour money into trivial fundraisers that leave people with pink sashes or shirts that say “save the ta-tas.” Again, although awareness is important, in my opinion- it is even more important to spend that donated money on research for a cure. This company also claims that in purchasing an ABCF product, a portion of that money will go towards their funds for cancer screenings and diagnostic tests. This leads me to wonder how much is actually being donated towards those programs and how much is being retained without an agenda. Since it is considered a non-profit company, ABCF benefits from the typically positive view that people have towards non-profits, as they seem relatively altruistic. This could lead towards more donations because people will assume that they are going directly to the funds for the programs that company stand for (diagnostic testing, breast cancer screenings, etc).

This company is able to access data because you have to create an account to donate money or start a fundraiser. In creating the account, the individual has to answer some standard questions, including age, residence, gender, etc. This could allow the company to draw connections between a certain demographic and how much money that person is typically able to donate. This might have an influence on how they market their company, spending more time advertising to a wealthier audience, who would have the ability to donate more money than a middle-class audience. It would be interesting to evaluate the data of that data, where companies could see the internal benefits that people experience after donating. Perhaps they could evaluate the existing data of a certain demographic and compare their level of internal satisfaction with the level from a different demographic. Maybe the company would discover that although wealthy people have the ability to donate more, middle-class people experience more internal satisfaction after donating and therefore are willing to give more.