How does running a marathon benefit a charity?

Someone I know is running a marathon for a specific charity. He is asking for money from everyone we know. My question is, when people do this does the money usually go to charity or just to pay for the person to run in the marathon? The marathon is out of the country and I don't want to donate just for someone to take a vacation, only if I know it's going right to that charity. Can anyone explain this?|||Well donations are often made at the race as well as race fees are usually pretty high. I know a lot of major marathons charge like $200 for an entry fee. Part of the entry fee goes to the charity.





Obviously you don't trust the person who wants your money, since you don't then don't give them the money.





-Connor|||There are different ways that various charities or events set up donation methods.



However, it's usually 100% of what you donate that goes to the charity.



No, you do not pay for the person's trip or anything. That would only happen if you give them the money directly and they're not straight about what they're doing with it. But there are many charities and events these days (and online services) that allow people to raise money for charities from their running with you donating directly through their system. The person who's running never touches the money.



If the person is asking you to give them money directly and it's going to charity, they should at the least be able to provide you some kind of receipt (for tax purposes). And you might want to ask them if the charity or event has an online donation system -- if they do, you can just provide the funds via the service that way rather than handing money to this person.



Anyway, your concerns are understandable. But the standard / norm is for 100% of what you donate to go to the charity. At the most, people sometimes simply have their own entry fee waived if they've raised over a certain level. That's it. They don't get any of the money themselves.|||its usually 50 50 half of the time people say money is going to a charity so they can get money for themeselves but if theres going to be a marathon its going to a charity because people donate money and its advertised by different companies so the money goes to charity because why else would marathons usually be on tv and stuff and the hospitals that need donations usually make there on ads for stuff like that