People are familiar with a popular style of fundraising, where people walking, running, biking, or just otherwise sweating for a given interval of time is connected somehow to an influx of cash toward a worthy cause.

Amongst the questionable practices of such events:

• charging a fee or setting a fundraising minimum to the volunteer participant

• driving the volunteers to harrass their neighbours for donations, a practice also familiar to schools and clubs whoring kids out to sell chocolates and trinkets, and to multi-level-marketing organizations

• publishing dizzying motivational propaganda that they are causing the impending end of the disease-du-jour, when in fact they are simply funding research or treatment or administration, with ending said condition as only a long term possibility

To the volunteers, some advice:

• if you just want to enjoy some specific mob exercise event, keep in mind you can likely do so even without participating in the fundraising: just slip into the crowd and off you go

• don’t imagine that there is any kind of market or value exchange happening when your exercise efforts are “paid for” by the sponsors you signed up; they don’t care if you run or not, they may just want you to go away

• consider encouraging your sponsors (and yourself) to donate directly to your favourite cause, and bypass the mob exercise administrative middleman