What do Form 990 filings reveal about ALSAC’s fundraising transfers to St. Jude and program expense allocations?
Executive summary
Form 990 filings make clear that ALSAC is the dedicated fundraising arm for St. Jude and that its annual returns document large transfers of donor support to the hospital while also disclosing substantial fundraising expenses; the documents available on St. Jude’s site and in public databases let readers trace “ALSAC contribution” lines, fundraising costs, and program expense reporting on the hospital’s separate Form 990s [1] [2] [3]. Independent summaries and rating services corroborate that analysts use those exact Form 990 lines—total support, ALSAC transfer, program expenses, and fundraising—to evaluate how donations flow between the two entities [4] [5].
1. ALSAC’s identity and purpose are stated explicitly on the Form 990s
ALSAC’s Form 990 filings repeatedly state that the American Lebanese Syrian Associated Charities exists solely to raise funds and build awareness to sustain the mission of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, a fact spelled out in ALSAC’s own IRS filings and the schedules and narrative sections that accompany those returns [1] [6] [2].
2. The filings show a formal transfer from ALSAC to St. Jude, captured as “ALSAC contribution”
Form 990s and accompanying schedules disclose the flow of donor support: gifts collected by ALSAC are reported in total support and the filings explicitly show the transfer or contribution line to St. Jude Hospital, which is how the hospital’s operations receive donor-funded resources raised by ALSAC [4] [3]. Public guides on reading the forms point readers to those exact lines—total support, ALSAC contribution, program expenses and fundraising—for a quick assessment of where donor dollars went [4].
3. Fundraising expenses are large and visible on ALSAC’s returns
ALSAC’s separate Form 990s itemize fundraising costs as a major functional expense; third‑party summaries that analyze those filings highlight multi‑hundred‑million dollar fundraising expenditures and present them as a significant portion of ALSAC’s revenue in recent years, with one analysis reporting roughly $850 million spent on fundraising in the latest year cited and showing transfers to St. Jude of about $1.7 billion [7]. Charity evaluator documents likewise rely on Form 990 disclosure of fundraising expenses when calculating fundraising efficiency [5].
4. St. Jude’s Form 990 presents program expenses and how transferred funds are applied
The hospital’s separate Form 990 reports total functional expenses and program service costs; these filings are designed to show how the hospital uses resources to deliver research and patient care, and they must be read alongside ALSAC’s returns to connect the fundraising inflows to program spending [3] [8]. The public combined financial reports referenced by guides compress those headline lines so readers can see “where each dollar goes,” but the detailed accounting lives in each entity’s Form 990 [4] [3].
5. Public databases and transparency tools make the filing trail accessible
Platforms that aggregate IRS filings, such as ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer and GuideStar, host or link to the digitized Form 990 documents so stakeholders can inspect compensation, revenue, expense breakdowns, and the ALSAC–St. Jude relationship across years [9] [10]. St. Jude’s own site publishes ALSAC and St. Jude Form 990 PDFs, enabling direct verification of the contribution and expense lines reported to the IRS [2] [11].
6. How to interpret the numbers—and the limits of Form 990s
Form 990s reveal flows and categories—ALSAC’s fundraising costs, the dollar transfer to St. Jude, St. Jude’s program expenses—but they don’t by themselves adjudicate efficiency or motive; evaluators use these standardized lines to compute fundraising efficiency and sustainability metrics, while narrative Schedule O entries and audited statements provide additional context [5] [1]. The filings make evident the institutional design—separate fundraising and service entities—so comparisons with charities that combine fundraising and program functions require careful reading of these intercompany transfers [7] [4].
7. Alternative readings and potential agendas in coverage
Analysts and critics can emphasize different facts: some highlight high fundraising costs as evidence of inefficiency, others point to large transfers to the hospital and program spending as proof that donor dollars reach patient care; both interpretations rely on the same Form 990 lines but draw different normative conclusions, a dynamic visible in independent write‑ups that parse the same filings [7] [4]. Reporters and watchdogs must therefore cite the exact filing lines and, where relevant, Schedule O explanations so readers can see the data rather than rely solely on summary narratives [1].