ADA Tour de Cure vs JDRF Ride To Cure
I’ve had diabetes for 17 years. Friday, I went to the local JDRF office for the first time ever. I went there to sign posters for the 5 riders that were being sent from New Mexico to Sonoma, CA for the Ride To Cure Diabetes. While there, I had a good conversation with some of the JDRF folk. We had a conversation that I had often thought about but never expressed (or maybe only slightly expressed it).
I went to college with one of the JDRF peeps and she knew I was into cycling and she said that I should do a Ride To Cure. And so, the conversation begins.
I’d want to do a Ride to Cure, but when I look at the impact it will have and how much money needs to be raised for a single ride, I don’t see it going as far as me being able to go to several different places and to be able to ride more miles and see and talk to more people and for the same amount of minimal fundraising required for the Ride to Cure.
And I broke it down for them.
With the Ride to Cure, there are two routes to go:
1) raise money for the “event package” which depending on the ride is either $3000 or $3200 and includes
• Ride training by a local coach or our National Head Coach certified by USA Cycling
• Fundraising strategies, support and tips from JDRF
• First night welcome reception
• Three nights stay at host hotel for the event
• Breakfast and Dinner (Lunch on your own during excursions and travel)
• Pre- and Post-ride celebrations on site
• Ride to Cure Diabetes jersey by Hincapie Sportswear
• Finisher medal
• Reward of having made a contribution to finding a cure for diabetes!
or
2) raise money for the “complete travel package” which, depending on the ride this is anywhere between $4200 or $4700, it includes everything in the event package as well as:
• Round-trip airfare to the ride city booked by JDRF
• Bike shipped to and from the ride city
• Transfers to and from the airport on Thursday and Sunday
And then I started in on my opinions. I’m not raising money to travel to go and do something for a cure, I’m raising money for a cure, traveling is all on me, I don’t have to travel to help find a cure, it’s a bonus. With that said, people shouldn’t have to donate to me traveling. Their donations are in the name of a cure. I’d go with the “event package” just for that reason and I’d stop donations just below the amount for the “complete travel package” because I think it’s wrong that someone else pay for my trip in the name of finding a cure.
Riding in the Tour de Cures, I’ve figured out how to minimize my traveling costs (it only took me a year of driving, flying, and hotel stays to figure this out)…I have friends/family all around the country. The majority of them are more than pleased to see me even if it’s in the name of a bike ride and they’ll let me stay at their homes. If I book my plane tickets in advance, they’re below $200, even to big cities across the country from me. If I’m smart, I book my flight on Southwest, because they’re the cheapest airline to put a bike on at $100 round trip. If I don’t have a choice but to fly another airline I’m looking at $200 round trip for my bike. I’m all about having a car where ever I’m going, my very own car, and really, it’s not a car, it’s an SUV and it’s because I’m slightly a snob and because I don’t like sitting on the ground in little cars. I rent a car where ever I go, no questions asked. End of story. It’s a cost I prepare for. There’s no need to raise an extra $1500 to cover these costs.
And then I broke down the bare minimum cost, $3200. In most cases, the minimum fundraising amount for a Tour de Cure is $150. Some of the rides are a little more because we cover greater distances, it’s a more popular ride, it’s a multi-day ride, etc. I like to strive for a minimum of $500 a ride, sometimes I do my due diligence and make it, sometimes I just raise the bare minimum. But lets say I do $500 a ride. With $3200, I could do 6 Tour de Cures in a year. Which means, I could ride up over 600 miles as opposed to the 109ish which is the max mileage in any of the Ride to Cures.
Riding is important to me, 2 years ago, cycling saved my life. It gave me a reason to live, something to strive for, it keeps me healthy, it keeps me intact. Training for a single century-ish length ride a year, it isn’t enough. And I know that it’s for more than the sake of riding, that it’s for a cure, but if I’m going to raise that much money, I want it to mean more than a hundred miles and a check written to stem cell research.
I get that meaning in the Tour de Cures. Having ridden in 9 Tour de Cures, 8 of them in different states, I’ve learned several things. One being, people riding in the Tour de Cure, aren’t necessarily riding in it because they know someone with diabetes, many athletes use them as training rides because they’re mostly well supported. So I’ll be out there riding, and having a conversation with someone about diabetes because of the jersey I’m wearing and it’ll be great because I’m educating them. And I love that. Whereas, you can bet if someone’s riding in the Ride To Cure, they know someone with diabetes or they have diabetes. It changes everything when I’m out there riding and people don’t even know what they paid for because all they wanted was a training ride.
Ok, back to where my money goes, because they made a good point, and this point used to bother me. The ADA has a lot more overhead than the JDRF and much of our money raised goes to other things besides finding a cure. But some of that stuff is important, camps for kids, educating people (I’m not so much a fan of the pamphlets sitting in the doctor’s offices though.), I didn’t use to think that that other stuff was as important as a cure and I scoffed at it. But education is important, and I think more importantly than the education being funded through the dollars I raise, is the education that is being displayed with all the diabetic athletes out there because it shows younger kids with diabetes that it’s not the end of their lives (so different from what was portrayed 20 years ago, at least to me, I digress). The JDRF is ranked high among non-profit organizations for keeping their overhead low and for “putting almost every dollar spent to work curing disease….” my main concern with this is the research their funding. They fund mostly embryonic stem cell research and that’s not something I support. I don’t believe that our cure lies in embryonic stem cell research and I don’t support it on moral grounds. That’s not to say that the ADA isn’t supporting it with the funds I raise, but they’re also designating the funds to other things as well. And the other things are important. (I will say this though, I did find out that I can check a box that says “don’t donate this money to stem cell research”).
It was a good conversation, and both sides were well taken, and one day, I will do a Ride to Cure, but probably not in the near future. And not in the near future simply because I have a goal I’m working on, I want to ride in every Tour de Cure, and at last count, there was 84 of them, and in order to do that and raise the funds for them, I need to not put all my raised funds into a single ride.
One Response to “ADA Tour de Cure vs JDRF Ride To Cure”
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JDRF does not mostly fund stem cell research. I don’t know where you got that idea but it’s wrong. JDRF funds dozens of research avenues, most of which have nothing to do with stem cell research. Yes, JDRF does fund it and yes, they’ve done a lot of lobbying for it but it’s not the majority of their research. In fact, Scott Strumello just wrote a piece about another JDRF-funded project partnering up with a pharmaceutical company to bring it out of clinical trials. And it’s not on stem cell research. http://sstrumello.blogspot.com/2009/06/jdrf-reports-new-progress-in.html. You can visit JDRF.org to find out all the different places they fund, or you can email my friend Gary at gfeit@jdrf.org and tell him I sent you. He’s the director of Public Information.
I don’t support ADA because ADA seems to focus primarily on type 2 diabetics, and I’d rather focus on type 1 diabetes. That’s what I’m concerned with, that’s what I live with, that’s my priority. JDRF also does a lot of education as well, most of it I’ve been a part of and would love to tell you more.
I can see why you’d rather do a lot of smaller fundraisers to do a lot of rides, since that’s what you love to do. It’s certainly a lot more economical! And it’s cool that you can educate in the process. So I’m not saying you should stop riding for the ADA. My point is that you seem to have drawn a lot of inaccurate conclusions about JDRF based on stem cell research simply because you disagree with it, and I encourage you to visit their website to see the dozens of research projects they are currently funding around the country and around the world through their affiliate chapters.