Shark Shootout Noted For "Vastly Inefficient" Charitable Giving

Paula Lavigne writes this ESPN.com companion piece to an ESPN Outside the Lines story on waste in charitable sports organizations.

Greg Norman's Shark Shootout the lone golf-related entity earning acclaim for billing itself as a charitable enterprise but in reality spent just a third of its income on charitable recipients.

President Bart Collins said the shootout follows the same model as other PGA Tour events, where the biggest expenses are prize money and the cost to get the event on television, which are necessary to attract players, sponsors and fans. "Whether you save 15 or 20 percent on catering or scaffolding or parking or the other operational expenses," won't matter much, he said, when those two big expenses are often "cast in stone."

And...

"It's a hard business, and our heart's in it," Collins said. "I understand, with 115 athletes, you'll have some abuses with charities, but this really isn't one of them."

Despite that argument and the bottom line, Berger, from Charity Navigator, stands firm, saying the shootout was, "so vastly inefficient that it just sort of trumps everything else."

The report: