Ask HN: Best organizations to donate to for cancer research?

It honestly depends what your goal is. You can fund research or treatment, both dollars get spent in entirely different ways. You can work with research hospitals like dana farber, the James or programs like St. Judes et al. One of the best things you can do; b/c lets be frank, even if you donated millions you aren't going to make a dent, is to help raise awareness. Most cancers now a days can be stopped, or have much better treatment outcomes by early detection. If you'd like, I'd recommend you look in to Pelotonia or the Pan Mas Challenge if you are on the east coast / midwest. Both are great organizations where 100% of the money raised goes to cancer research. In addition, you help raise awareness by talking to people about a cause you believe in and it helps spread the word that way. Thats where I focus my time , energy and $$.

Pay your taxes. Most cancer research funding comes from the government. And hopefully the results of this research will be available for all people.

Any time I observe corporations latching on, apparently/obviously for their own PR (e.g. the Komen "Pinkwashing" blitz and stunts), I become extremely suspicious.

I'd also look out for efforts that will or may seek to privatize their outputs. (E.g. the increasing role of such in much university research.) In this case, as much because resultant costs may withhold treatment from many. Also because such private interest tends to sale-able product over fundamental research.

Not cancer, and I haven't followed up to confirm my suspicion. But the recent news about Merc having a "100% effective" Ebola vaccine? IIRC, that comes out of Canadian government or government-funded research that was sold off a few years ago to Merc for a relative pittance.

Guess where your dollars should go. And also, don't let politicians trade the fruits of such to their business cronies. Not without controls to ensure public benefit shares equal or greater weight with/than private profit.

Whatever you're looking to donate to, Charity Navigator[0] is a good place to look for highly rated charities. If they have a good rating, they're probably good.

Also if anyone is looking to donate to a charity that gives 100%, aka a pass-through charity, I started one for my friend and his family last year[1], as they have an unknown genetic disease which has symptoms related to ALS, Muscular Distrophy, and several other symptoms.

[0] https://www.charitynavigator.org/

[1] https://thessf.org

Oddly, I fund the promulgation of open science. Too much of cancer research has become regimented and secretive. Experimental data is hard to reproduce or verify and opinions are held as the final truth. Much as the 'cocktails' finally cracked the mortality of AIDS, I believe much of the work for cancer treatment has been done in separate pockets of knowledge.

While this does not directly answer you question, a prize for the heretics would be good. Perhaps Barry Marshal or Robin Warren would run it; they faced massive criticism for their work with H. Pylori before it became mainstream.

I have been alternating my yearly giving between http://www.stjude.org/ and http://curechildhoodcancer.org/ which I think are both worthy.

I have been disappointed in my ability to give to specific cancers like leukemia, though, which I'm guessing is similar to what you are finding (focused giving for specific types of research or specific diseases)

I appreciate you might have personal reasons for wanting to donate towards cancer, but I'd encourage you to consider other diseases as well.

Cancer research attracts a huge amount of funding so the ROI of donations is much lower (i.e there's no low hanging fruit) than less common diseases.

NYU Langone has a lot of ads in the NYC area, though I am no expert on this