Livestrong built its brand on Lance Armstrong; his fall halved its revenue in two years

The foundation's brand was one man. Founded in 1997 as the Lance Armstrong Foundation, it became one of the most visible cancer charities in America through the yellow Livestrong wristband it launched with Nike in 2004: more than 80 million bands sold, about $25 million raised in the first six months alone, and a fundraising engine that ran on Armstrong's credibility as a survivor and a seven-time Tour de France champion. By 2011 the charity took in $48.8 million a year.

On 10 October 2012 the US Anti-Doping Agency published its reasoned decision: the team Armstrong led ran 'the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen'. He received a lifetime ban and was stripped of his results from 1998 onward, and in January 2013 he admitted the doping himself in a television interview.

The sponsors left within a week. Nike, the partner that had built the wristband, ended a relationship worth about $7.5 million a year on 17 October, citing 'the seemingly insurmountable evidence that Lance Armstrong participated in doping and misled Nike for more than a decade'. Armstrong resigned as Livestrong's chairman the same day 'to spare the foundation any negative effects', and Anheuser-Busch, Trek, Honey Stinger and RadioShack cut ties within days. In May 2013 Nike ended the Livestrong product line itself, closing a nine-year partnership that had raised more than $100 million.

The foundation paid in donations rather than contracts. Revenue fell 22% to $38.1 million in 2012, then donations fell another 34% to about $15 million in 2013 as sponsorships were cancelled or simply not renewed. It severed its remaining ties with its founder in November 2012, but the brand had been him: a charity built on a single face shrank deliberately to a fraction of its former scale — and survived, though its decade of $40-million-plus budgets did not return.