Lance Armstrong may have been banned from biking after being linked to performance enhancing drugs, but the silver lining of the ugly ordeal was that his cancer research charity, Livestrong stayed intact.
The disgraced biker stepped away from the nonprofit organization, but apparently that wasn’t enough for some donors who are asking for their money back!
Michael Birdsong is one of those investors and is now looking to pursue legal action due to some questions he has about how the company spends their money:
“They sent, like, five staff members for 21-plus days to France to just follow [Armstrong] around ├óΓé¼ΓÇ¥ and tweet about it. And they had this really big party on the Champs-Elysees the final day of the tour. How is this effective?”
A lot of other donors are asking themselves the same question, as many of them believed they were giving money to an organization that funds clinical research.
However, Livestrong communication├óΓé¼Γäós chief Katherine McLane says that’s not exactly the case:
“What we began investing in, instead of clinical research, was an ongoing dialogue with patients, with survivors, with their families, to gauge the long-term effects that cancer takes on a family and on one├óΓé¼Γäós livelihood and on one├óΓé¼Γäós psyche, on one├óΓé¼Γäós body.”
Livestrong has reported that they donate 82 cents for every dollar show, but IRS tax returns from 2011 showed that they donated closer to 11 cents per dollar!
Michael says he feels like he was mislead when he gave money to the organization and is looking to get his money back:
“I gave you this money, and worked for you and asked other people for this money in good faith. We were suckers. We got taken. That├óΓé¼Γäós the way sometimes we feel about it.”
Livestrong says they have NO plans to return any money to their disgruntled donors, meaning Birdsong and others will have to proceed with legal action.
Looks like we’lll just have to wait and see how things play out in court!!
[Image via WENN.]
Related Posts
-
Categories
