A month or so ago, Countess and I streamed the movie “The Founder”, the partly accurate story of Ray Kroc and the founding of McDonald’s. The movie focused on the business relationship between Kroc and the McDonald brothers who designed the carefully choreographed system to sell burgers and fries in 30 seconds.
Because I subscribe to their mailing list, I got an email soliciting me to donate to RMHC™ – it took me a bit to realize what that was. Ronald McDonald House was a charity formed to provide temporary housing for the families of children undergoing medical treatment at hospitals.
However, McDonald’s has walked away from their iconic mascot, which leaves the Ronald McDonald house without a connection to its origin. Children today don’t get the idea of Ronald McDonald. Much of McDonald’s success was due to advertising on the emerging medium of television that wormed its way into the brains of children everywhere. The children would go to birthday parties at McDonald’s and a generation later take their kids to spend an hour with the real Ronald McDonald.
McDonald’s management and activist groups have been trying to phase out Ronald McDonald since 2003, at one point reimaging the clown as a skinny “healthy” clown. The Founder’s story never mentioned Ronald McDonald, and the charity just barely acknowledged the inspiration for the charity.
After Ray Kroc died, Joan did not leave Ray’s fortune to the Ronald McDonald House charity, but instead left around $200 million to National Public Radio, and a much larger donation to the Salvation Army.
http://www.legacy.com/news/culture-and-trends/article/joan-kroc-unconventional-philanthropist
there’s a ronald mcdonald house of charlotte; charity navigator gives it three (out of four possible) stars. revenue of $2.2 million for fiscal year ending 12/15. net assets just under $12 million. executive director makes $145,732 a year (10 percent of expenses.)
Are the assets composed of the housing for the families, or is it cash sitting in Goldman Sachs to fund the future office building for the CEO and his/her administrative staff?
Charlotte NC is a city of 800,000 people in a metro area of over 2 million. The families needing temporary housing while a child is in the nearby pediatric hospital are likely from the other parts of the state (or internationally) who come here for specialized treatment for difficult problems.
The bulk of the assets were spent to build an eight million dollar facility (picture below)
According to their IRS filing, in 2015they provided 537 families of an average of 4 members a stay of about 4 days. The facility has 28 bedrooms as mentioned in this virtual tour. With ~8500 person days (a lot of whom are probably siblings), on average 23 people spread over 28 bedrooms.
The facility describes the accommodations as reasonably priced, not free. Less than half of the charity’s revenue comes from donations and grants.
Virtual Tour
https://youtu.be/ABGRNshFAIQ
They have a lovely meeting room in the basement for when the 21 board members meet
The executive director pulling down the $160k a year to run the place
https://styleblueprint.com/charlotte/everyday/mona-johnson-gibson-ronald-mcdonald-house-faces-charlotte/
Another $450k in salaries goes to organize the volunteers
The ACN logo on the building and one of the employees in a youtube video is this entity
http://acninc.com/company
The annual fundraising event organized by ACN is held at Donald Trump’s golf course near Charlotte
> ” Much of McDonald’s success was due to advertising on the emerging medium of television that wormed its way into the brains of children everywhere. The children would go to birthday parties at McDonald’s and a generation later take their kids to spend an hour with the real Ronald McDonald.”
Yes. Much of the genus was building the small playgrounds for pre-school children. Their wishes have a big sway with parents and eliminate the need to take the kids to an outdoor playground. It also implants early happy memories in the kids that they will want to relive as teens and adults.