LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA - The Avon Foundation announced Friday its three remaining breast cancer charity walks scheduled for next month will take place despite the financial meltdown of the for-profit company organizing and producing the events. <br>
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The future of the walks, scheduled for successive weekends in Atlanta, New York and Los Angeles, had been in limbo since Aug. 23, when Los Angeles fund-raising firm Pallotta TeamWorks furloughed its entire staff of more than 250 people. <br>
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On Friday, following two weeks of negotiations, Avon and Pallotta reached an agreement to have the fund-raising company bring back about half its staff to stage the walks. <br>
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``We're good to go,'' said Susan Heaney, president of the Avon Breast Cancer Crusade. ``We've gotten back on track.'' <br>
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More than 20,000 people have registered for the walks, which follow 10 other similar events held in various cities earlier this year. Those walks raised an estimated $50 million for charity, with each participant pledging at least $1,900. <br>
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``I'm relieved,'' said Abby Shiffman, a crew member on the Atlanta walk. <br>
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Participants in the Georgia event had begun discussions on how to hold the event without Avon or Pallotta, Shiffman said. <br>
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The future of Pallotta, once one of the nation's largest for-profit fund-raising companies, remains in doubt once the walks are completed. <br>
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``We're done,'' said company spokeswoman Janna Sidley. ``We do not have any business for 2003.'' <br>
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Since Dan Pallotta founded Pallotta TeamWorks a decade ago, it has netted more than $222 million for AIDS- and breast cancer-related causes. <br>
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Several years ago, the company began attracting criticism for what it spent on marketing, administration and logistics in staging the events, including its AIDSRidesUSA. <br>
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In 1997, a Pennsylvania state investigation ended with Pallotta then Pallotta and Associates Inc. paying $110,000 to settle allegations it misrepresented how much of the net proceeds from one of its AIDS rides would go to charity. <br>
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On average, the company has spent about 40 percent of what it takes in on administration, advertising and other costs, with the balance going to charity. <br>
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For some events, Pallotta's costs and fees gobbled up nearly 90 percent of the gross receipts, the company has said. <br>
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The Council of Better Business Bureaus recommends no more than 35 percent of donations go to fund-raising costs. <br>
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The company has defended the falloff in donations, saying some events drew a smaller number of participants. Still, the slickly produced events cost the same to stage regardless of how many people took part, the firm said. <br>
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Amid the criticism, Pallotta's beneficiaries and sponsors alike began cutting ties with the company, just as it branched out internationally and into other events, including walks to benefit suicide awareness and adoption programs. <br>
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Avon was among the last to pull out when it announced this spring it would drop its support of the three-day breast-cancer walks produced under contract by Pallotta and instead organize its own series of shorter charity walks. <br>
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Pallotta had already discontinued its series of bicycle rides benefiting AIDS research. The rides had been the company's mainstay. <br>
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That has left the company, which had put on roughly 80 events in its short history, without sponsors or beneficiaries. At its peak, it had hundreds of employees in more than a dozen offices nationwide.
