Epic fail

My take is that if you want to make a difference then vote / campaign for a political party that will raise and spend the necessary money - if it is worth your time as a fundraiser or money as a donator then government should be providing it.

In an ideal world you might be right, but in this world your political campaigning effort will probably be entirely cancelled out by other people campaigning for other things, whereas giving tiny amounts of money to cancer research does actually buy a (tiny) bit more cancer research.