At The Daily, we like charities. Nonprofit organizations provide help and money to the people who need it most — building homes for low-income families, raising money for cancer research or buying shoes for children who can’t afford them.
As nonprofit groups, charities often ask for donations to fund their activities. In 2010, Habitat for Humanity raised over $100 million in cash donations, nearly a third of is operating budget for the year, according to the organization’s website.
However, a problem arises when businesses use the idea of donating to put pressure on consumers to choose their product over those from another business.
On Tuesday, some students gave up wearing shoes as part of an effort to encourage others to donate to TOMS Shoes’ “Day Without Shoes” campaign to buy shoes for children living in poverty.
As part of the campaign, for every pair of shoes that is purchased from TOMS, the company will donate a pair of shoes to charity. One for one.
If customers were planning on buying a pair of TOMS shoes anyway, this deal is perfectly fine. But customers should not feel obligated to shop with TOMS just because a portion of the sale goes to a good cause. This is an unfair marketing ploy.
This is especially true when only a fraction of consumer’s money actually ends up going to a nonprofit cause. Starbucks’ RED campaign donates $1 per every pound of RED blend sold to Global Fund. But since a pound of coffee makes a lot of coffee, and Starbucks coffee sells for around $3 a cup, this means that the coffee shop makes far more off profits than it donates.
Customers should feel free to shop where they want, free from pressure to make every purchase part of a gift to a nonprofit group.
Charity should be a gift, not an obligation. Instead of feeling like you need to buy certain brands to donate, why not just go the extra step and donate all of that money to charity?
The Oklahoma Daily is pleased to provide you the opportunity to share your thoughts about this article. We encourage lively debate on the issues of the day, but we ask you refrain from using profanity or other offensive speech, engaging in personal attacks or name-calling, posting advertising, or straying from the topic at hand. To comment, you must be a registered user of OUDaily.com. Thanks for taking the time to offer your thoughts.
You must be logged in to leave a comment. Log in | Register
bruenig 1 year, 1 month ago
RSA Animate - First as Tragedy, Then as Farce by theRSAorg
Relevant
Jaco99 1 year, 1 month ago
After a day withot shoes sponsored by a shoe company, I am anxiously awaiting the Budweiser sponsored "A Day without a Beer"- think of all the underpriviliged children who go about their day without being drunk!
That being said, charity is not selfless but rather selfish. If we as a society wanted to provide shoes and quality living conditions to those in need, we could. If we as a world decided to do the same for those in underdeveloped countries, we could. However, we do not. Charity is the way that the sententious moralizers in an unequal society are able to assuage their priviliged guilt and find a way to sleep at night. Let me know when the Salvation Army solves poverty.
noonespecial 1 year, 1 month ago
Economists define the value that people place on goods and services they purchase as 'utility'. People derive utility by buying a banana and eating it. Good natured people also derive utility by serving others through charity and volunteering. No one would perform charitable acts if they didn't derive utility out of it. This isn't a selfish concept; it just means that people place value in charitable works.
Of course companies profit more off of their charitable causes than they give out. It wouldn't be sustainable if they didn't. Ethos water bottles donate only a dime for each water bottle sold. While this isn't an enormous amount and is only a fraction of the selling price, Ethos is able to support clean water initiatives in the developing world indefinitely rather than having a six month campaign then going bankrupt.
This concept is known as Social Entrepreneurship. Its mission is to provide help to people in need through sustainable business models rather than basic charity. This way, organizations can have a lasting impact on the areas they are helping instead of dumping a bunch of charity on them then leaving. Organizations such a Project RED and TOMS shoes are perfect examples of this. They are up front and clear about their mission and where the money goes. If they had questionable practices, then I could understand your concerns. I want companies like this to profit and become wildly successful so they can further their mission to help those in need.
To further educate yourselves on this new trend, I strongly encourage the Daily editorial staff to attend the College of International Studies' Social Entrepreneurship Symposium this evening at 5:00pm at the Sandy Bell Gallery of the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art. More info here: http://www.ou.edu/content/ipc/home/left_navigation/offerings_and_events/social_entrepreneurshiplecture
JCullen 1 year, 1 month ago
I am curious why you feel it is a problem when businesses create a competitive marketing campaign to sell their product. I guess if other company campaigns went like this, "For every pair of shoes Nike sells, we will pay Blake Griffin a percentage of the profit," (which is actually what happens) then you would then have a problem with using athletes to persuade customers? Except in the case of TOMS, they are actually helping people who need the help, instead of a multi-millionaire.
If you go to TOMS Web site, you will find that when someone buys a pair of shoes, TOMS gives a pair of shoes to someone in need – not just a fraction of their profits.
Businesses aren't always non-profit, however, in the modern business model, corporate responsibility is becoming an issue that is being addressed by the CEOs of larger corporations. This is their response. Would you rather them sit in their offices and do nothing? At least they are attempting to provide some assistance to people who are not as fortunate as all of us.
DylanC94 1 year, 1 month ago
Dear OU Daily, Shut the hell up about charity already! This is the second time in a week, you've bashed someone for trying to do the right thing.
Get a life and report some news!
sandra 1 year, 1 month ago
Thanks for writing something sensible, Daily.
radiant_enigma 1 year, 1 month ago
While TOMS's donations seem admirable at first glance, they are actually doing more harm than good.
First, lack of shoes is a tiny problem among impoverished people and a multitude of far greater problems exist. The money that it costs to ship in those shoes far outweighs the marginal good that it does.
More importantly, however, by flying in shoes and giving them away for free, TOMS floods local markets and takes away badly needed income from people who earn their livings making and selling shoes. A far better practice would be for the company to buy shoes from local markets for redistribution, but that is not what they do.
I am all in favor of social entrepreneurship, but just because something gives things away does NOT mean that it is doing real good. As companies like TOMS demonstrate, what seems at first like an admirable concept actually harms the very people it is trying to help by taking away essential jobs and income.