What percentage of donations to st. jude go directly to patient care versus facilities and salaries?
This fact-check may be outdated. Consider refreshing it to get the most current information.
Executive summary
St. Jude and its fundraising arm ALSAC state that 82 cents of every dollar received has gone to support treatment, research and the future needs of the hospital over the past seven years [1] [2] [3]. Independent reporting from ProPublica and historical summaries complicate that headline: ProPublica’s analysis of ALSAC’s IRS filings found roughly 30% of contributions covered fundraising and about 20% were added to reserves in a recent multi-year period, with a smaller share going to St. Jude’s direct operations in some years [4] [5].
1. What St. Jude says: 82 cents to mission, broadly defined
St. Jude’s public materials and FAQs repeatedly state that “82 cents of every dollar received” supports treatment, research and future needs of the hospital, and that families never receive a bill for care, travel, housing or food — language the organization uses to summarize how donations are applied [1] [2] [3]. Charity evaluator summaries cited by St. Jude — and its own consolidated financial statements — are the basis for that 82-cent figure, which combines donations, research grants, insurance recoveries and investment returns into the denominator the hospital reports [2] [1].
2. What independent reporting found: fundraising costs and large reserve buildups
ProPublica’s 2024 investigation reviewed ALSAC’s IRS disclosures and reported that about 30% of contributions covered the charity’s fundraising operations and that roughly 20% of donations were added to reserve funds rather than spent in the same period on research or patient care, producing a picture in which a substantial portion of incoming dollars did not immediately reach clinical or research programs [4]. ProPublica also noted that ALSAC amassed multibillion-dollar reserves sufficient to operate St. Jude for several years at current levels, prompting questions about whether the organization’s reserve accumulation matched its immediate program needs [4].
3. The fundraising arm vs. the hospital: accounting and flow of funds
The finances are complicated because ALSAC — the fundraising entity — raises donations and then transfers funds to St. Jude hospital, while also retaining some dollars for its own operations and reserves; in at least one recent year ALSAC raised $1.9 billion and transferred roughly $975 million (about 51%) to St. Jude, with the remainder spent on ALSAC’s operations or held in balance [5]. Charity evaluators note ALSAC and St. Jude file separate returns and use different accounting categories for “program” versus “fundraising” and “management,” which can make direct comparisons across organizations and years difficult without digging into the underlying IRS forms and audited financial statements [6] [7].
4. Historical program splits give texture but aren’t a current breakdown
Older summaries and encyclopedic entries show that in earlier decades program expenses were divided between patient care and research — for example, a historical period in the early 2000s is cited as 47% patient care and 41% research of program expenses — but those figures are dated and don’t substitute for a current line-item split of donations into patient care versus facilities and salary costs [5]. St. Jude’s public 82-cent figure groups multiple mission activities together (treatment, research and future needs), so it does not present a granular current percentage specifically isolating “patient care” separate from “facilities and salaries” in the materials cited [1] [2].
5. Bottom line and limits of available reporting
A direct, contemporary percentage that isolates donations going “directly to patient care” versus those going to “facilities and salaries” cannot be fully extracted from the provided sources: St. Jude reports that 82 cents of every dollar supports treatment, research and future needs (a combined mission category) but does not break that down in the cited FAQ/financial summaries into a single patient-care-only percentage, while ProPublica’s reporting shows substantial proportions spent on fundraising and reserves in recent years without converting those into a precise current split between direct patient care and facilities/salary line items [1] [2] [3] [4]. For readers seeking a single, precise figure: the best-available, organization-backed headline is 82% to treatment, research and future needs [1] [2], but independent reporting raises legitimate questions about how much of donated dollars are used immediately for patient-facing services versus fundraising costs or added to reserves [4] [5].