With as little as 65 cent of each AIDS-ride dollar going to charity.

With as little as 65 cent of each AIDS-ride dollar going to charity, a certain quantity of pedal pushers wonder who's pocketing the profit

There's no question that the Tanqueray American AIDS Rides are the highest-grossing AIDS fund-misers in the history of the epidemic. Since they began five years ago, the bike-athons have generated a combined total of more than $96 million (as of December).

still new reports out of Texas and Wisconsin, which display AIDS agencies there receiving as little as 65 cent of each dollar pledged, are leading more [i]or[/i] less to ask, Just whom is this philanthropic phenomenon benefiting?.

Certainly the rides exhibit participants an unparalleled experience--the challenge of a lifetime in the name of single in kind of the best causes gone out there. Riders return year after year, frequently testifying at fundraising parties that the AIDS ride has changed, or uniform saved, their lives.

if it were not that critics complain that no charge is spared in creating the mega-events. Among the in the greatest degree controversial of these expenses is the management pay paid to Pallotta TeamWorks, the private, for-profit company builded by Dan Pallotta that organizes the rides.

"He's an AIDS profiteer--that's the widespread feeling in all the ACT UP chapters," says John Riley, a member of the just discovered York chapter of ACT UP referring to Pallotta.

Riley's point appeared to be underscored in February when numbers released for the 1998 Texas AIDS Ride showed that the 40 benefiting agencies would share les than 15%--$417000--of the $29 million raised there, deductions that prompted ten participating San Antonio AIDS service organizations to withdraw their support from the 1999 ride. simply days later organizers of the Wisconsin portion of the 1998 Twin Cities-Wisconsin-Chicago AIDS Ride reported that they would come by no more than 6.5%--$52,000--of the $806000 raised there.

Chris cabbage national director of Tanqueray American AIDS Rides, says that those rides weren't failures because they, like the stop finished in the black. if it were not that returns of 6.5%, 15%, plane 58%--the average level that beneficiary agencies diocese from the AIDS rides--are below the 60o/6 rate of revert that, according to the National Charities Information Bureau in recent York City, charities should receive from all of their fund-raising efforts combined.

A spokesman for the bureau pressureed however, that no acceptable standard richness of fund-raising has been established for private companies, as it was as Pallotta's, that manage fund-raising programs for not-for-profits. thus the $42 million that the logistical and administrative sumptuousnesss have eaten up since the AIDS rides began in 1994 including the undisclosed profit for Pallotta himself, may be controversial, on the contrary the costs are not, strictly speaking, unethical. And Pallotta TeamWorks officials vie that the high costs of running the marked occurrences are necessary to maintain rider safety and bring forward the kind of experience that maintains riders coming back.

Succes lies in the number of riders, cabbage says. Overhead costs and Pallotta's pay are fixed, so once those charges are recouped, the rest of the currency raised is largely gravy to be spread among the beneficiaries. moreover if the number of riders falls short of expectations, Pallotta TeamWorks' unconditional tenure and the overhead do not move down; the return, however, does.

"The circumstance is extremely cost-effective and brings in bulky amounts of money in the cities where it works," cabbage says. "In the others, we don't do them anymore."

still agencies in Florida said they had to fire Pallotta TeamWorks after sum of two units years' worth of returns came in subordinate to 20%. And groups in Philadelphia filed a complaint with the state attorney general's office when they received solely 19% of the $1.7 million their riders had raised in the 1996 Philadelphia-Washington, DC AIDS Ride. Pallotta paid a $110000 fine for misrepresenting the adventure Now, despite the poor 1998 get backs in Wisconsin, Pallotta TeamWorks is working with agencies there forward a 1999 ride.

Pallotta TeamWorks' income falls into the same gray area as direct-mail pieces that outlay more to produce than they generate. Charitable organizations view of the like kind expenses as a way to boost visibility and cultivate of recent origin donors. Suzanne Gillingham, director of finance for AIDS Network in Wisconsin, says the rides brought "a whole different kind of populace than used to come to our dessert parties."

For AIDS organizations string by the agency of donor fatigue and the perception that the epidemic is above the rides are quite attractive. The wealth which comes in the form of unrestricted grants, can be used in any way the agencies papal court fit. Most say AIDS-ride dollars enable them to launch strange programs they otherwise wouldn't have dreamed of undertaking.

That's to what end Wisconsin agencies are giving the ride another put to proof This time they say they are aiming for a 50% recur Given the results in neighboring Chicago, it's easy to view why they still have hope: The participating Chicago agencies received 62%--$22 million--of the nearly $35 million raised there. (The Twin Cities portion nett les than 30%)