MTV: Movember has 118 million Australian dollars - and assets keep growing

Movember has been growing very fast. When it started 2003, there were only 30 people involved. Last year over 1,1 million people took part in Movember.

MTV Finland´s current affairs programme 45 minuuttia (45 minutes) tried to find out, how Movember uses the money. Globally it seems that Movember keeps collecting more money than it spends. According to Ari Rajala, analyst of Finnish business daily Kauppalehti, Movember in fact has huge financial assets - worth almost 80 million euros (i.e. 118 million Australian dollars).

We asked, why a charity organization would need huge assets if the purpose is to fund research?

- We´re not holding on to these funds for any other purpose other than making sure that we´re funding the best possible research both globally and in Finland, Adam Garone, CEO of Movember says in the interview.

According to Garone, these assets have been growing fast because Movember itself has been growing fast. He emphasizes that all the money allocated for research is going to be used on research in the future.

The analyst Ari Rajala from Kauppalehti pointed out that the assets have been growing steadily for several years now. On 2010 Movember assets were under 10 million Australian dollars - last year the number rose up to 118 million Australian dollars.

There is one question Mr. Garone refuses to answer. The Movember Global Annual Report doesn´t tell much about, how the Movember top executives are being paid for their work in the organization. When asked directly Garone decided not to tell anything about his own salary or benefits, not even scale.

- You now I prefer not to. It´s a very personal matter. What I can tell you is that all the key executives at Movember, we employ a third party agency that are experts in benchmarking salaries. They look at the scope of my role, level of responsibility. They then benchmark it against other charitable organizations and provide a recommendation. We´ve got a subcommittee of the board called the re-numeration committee, so that the recommendation goes through them. The re-numeration committee looks at it. That then goes to the board of directors who set my salary.

This is the fifth year of Movember in Finland and year 11 globally.

In Finland Movember works with Finnish Cancer Society, Syöpäsäätiö. Syöpäsäätiö gave Finnish MTV 45 minuuttia full details on how Movember money was used in Finland last year. Year 2012 Movember raised 305 thousand euros in Finland. Altogether Movember got over 63 percent of the funds gathered in Finland for campaign costs, raising awareness and research purposes. Movember funds research through Global Action Plan GAP.

CEO Garone assured that eventually all the money gathered from Finland for research purposes will be used for research in Finland.