I've raised over $30,000.00+ for Autism Speaks since my son was diagnosed in 2008. I am the team captain of our team that has participated in the Walk for AS each year. Over the last two years, I've stopped organizing big fundraising events as I needed to focus more on my son and our family. But as I have done research of my own and checked out the organizations tax information which you can find online, it disturbed me to see how much Geri Dawson the chief science officer receives from Autism Speaks. While I am 100% behind research and working towards the exact causes, better treatments, and possibly a cure I find it disgusting that this woman made $600,000+ in 2012. Really?!? She deserves to make more money than the President of the United States? I am torn, I love the people I have met through Autism Speaks over the years but to see that most of the funds families raise go to pay her salary and not actual funding of research projects.

I think people's biggest bone of contention is how little of their millions actually directly helps families. It is public knowledge that less than 4% goes to "helping autistic families," which is the pitch you hear in April at most registers asking for money to help autistic families.

The autism community is deeply divided between those who consider ASD a medical condition to be cured and those who see it as an identity to be embraced. The "yay, autism!" crowd hates organizations like Autism Speaks who are working to try to find a cure because they don't believe they are in need of a cure. If someone wants to reject a cure for himself/herself, then that's their prerogative. But they should not be obstacles in the way of those of us who desperately seek a cure for our child's suffering. Autism is not who my child IS. It is a medical condition that she HAS.

Does AS really want to help and support autistics and their families? If so they could stop draining money from local communities and use it to create community support systems that would actually help them. They could stop putting most of the millions of dollars they get into preventing autistics from existing and actually use it to help the families and individuals who really need assistance.
It's all about perspective...

I also feel compelled to add that in fact many consider autism as being who they are because it is a neurological difference. Autistics brains are wired differently and this is part of who they are physically. No one is saying yay to the many problems that come with autism. They are just saying that their way of thinking is part of them and that they are completely capable of happiness no matter what their level of challenges is. Who's to say that disabled people, even the non-verbal and/or severely disabled aren't happy? Maybe the things that make them happy are just different.
Just saying it's something to think about...
Autism speaks also makes many false statements about the rate of marriages that end up in divorce because of autism and how parents think their children are a burden and a tragedy. I think it's important to let society know that autism speaks does not speak for everyone.