As I have said before, I am a great believer in private charity. Infact, as google.org attempts to show, charity can and should be profitable.
U2 singer Bono has started a a charity project called Project Red. It is a fund devoted to fighting AIDS in Africa. Rather than relying on traditional cut a check methods, it has taken a more innovative route. When you buy a product of a company associated with this project, a certain percentage will go towards an orgniazation called Global fund which fights against diseases like AIDS and Tuberculosis in Africa.
However, this has attracted a fair bit of flak.
Project Red is “damaging,” novelist Emily Maguire wrote in Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald, because it allows “the masses to do charity Hollywood-style. Don’t think about unpleasant things, grapple with complexities or–God forbid–change the way you live and spend. Simply go out and spoil yourself…and that’s it: You’ve done your bit.” The Toronto Star’s writer Jennifer Wells attacked the firms that participate in Project Red: “They…don’t need to sell us stuff in order to do good. They can behave like the rest of us: cut a check.”(link)
Okay. And if you cut a check, you have addressed all the complexities and made the lifestyle changes! Why doubt the motives? And whats wrong will selling goods? Consumer is not an idiot. I won’t buy a laptop just because some money will go to a charity, but if I am a buying it anyway, and if one brand promised to donate certain percentage of the proceeds, I will definitely prefer it.
Finally, as the article notes:
This sort of mind-set, which assumes that the only “good” charity is the kind that requires sacrifice and that prosperity is a zero-sum game, has dominated elite opinion for decades. But it’s getting a run for its money–literally–because people are starting to notice that there’s little to show for the billions of dollars that have been poured into impoverished nations other than the swollen bank accounts of kleptocrats. Rather than redistribute money, the smart thinking now goes, why not create Third World wealth the same way it’s been created in the First World: with good governance, property rights and the rule of law.
The key question is: Do we want the poor countries to stand on their feet or just feed their begging bowls? Which country in the history of mankind has ever become rich by charity?
p.s This is not to argue that project Red is perfect. I am merely making a larger point.
Filed under: Views On News
Bono’s (RED) evolved from his ONE Campaign – http://www.one.org/about. One struggled for lots of reasons, and I think RED is a way to get dollars in ways and from people that he hadn’t reached. I see nothing wrong with that.
I do feel that the dollar values that companies are giving are somewhat limited (like $10 off a $249 iPod), but that’s a different matter.
Interestingly, I attend a conference every year called TED. At TED last year (2005), Bono was awarded the TED prize and he asked for help with his ONE campaign. http://www.ted.com/tedprize/winners2005.cfm
I mention this only to say that in the same year, there was a most interesting speaker called Bjorn Lomborg. He started and was part of a project called the Coppenhagen Consensus. What the Copenhagen Consensus does is get top thinkers to figure out the charitable causes that be best addressed with funding. That is, if you gave one dollar to climate control or one dollar to fighting communicable diseases, where would your money be more efficiently used and actually help solve the problem. The first year, he had economists participate. In 2005, he had UN ambassadors do the ranking. It is quite interesting.
If you are someone who cares about how your money is used, check out the website.
http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/
[...] Confused’s post on motives behind charity giving, reminded me about one of the most analytical ways to think about charitable giving that I’ve ever heard of. Bjorn Lomborg, a Scandinavian economist, became famous for his controversial book, The Skeptical Environmentalist, that challenged the notion that our ecology was at risk. He proposed that our environment was actually improving and that if there was real risk, people would adapt how they did things in order to continue to live on earth. He also proposed that giving money to climate change was like burning it. [...]
R
Good one! Reminded me of Live 8, a series of concurrent benefit concerts that took place before the G8 Conference and Summit to heighten the saliency about Poverty in Africa and other related issues, thereby sensitizing the global community to the same.
This concept of “Poorer nations” begging at the doorsteps of “Developed economies” is beaten a thing. If one follows the kind of activities/programmes, marketers/societal bodies and nations are conceptualizing, the flavor of “empowerment”, “creation of opportunities” and “effective channelisation of funds” is much stronger than ever before. Not just a passive act of writing a cheque and drop in the box, but actively participating in the community programmes.
Participating brands in Project Red, in my opinion, are adapting Cause Related Marketing (CRM) that allows corporate identities to interact with nonprofit organizations, good causes, and significant social issues through cooperative marketing and fund-raising programs.
It could be purchase driven donations too! At home, P&G followed it for their range of personal hygiene brands, If I buy a pack of a branded sanitary napkin, a part of the MRP I invested would be driven towards a charity programmes aimed at empowering women and children from poorer families. The examples I cited in the “Private Charity” column of urs come under the same view.
…what AMEX did in 1983, a campaign to restore the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island…quite interesting thing, we were discussing about this previous evening.
…AMEX promised to contribute one cent for every card transaction and $1 for every new card issued during the last quarter of 1983 to the cause, American Express collected $1.7 million for the restoration effort. There was around 28% growth in use of the American Express cards and the massive press coverage and free publicity bestowed on the company as a result of the campaign were nice benefits. Many an example….
http://www.causemarketingforum.com/page.asp?ID=77
If my friends, tomorrow, decide not to go for one more round of beer but donate that spend on http://retributions.wordpress.com/2006/11/10/silence-is-golden-not/, wonder how can that be a “damaging” a trend? Instead of indulging themselves, the group of adults are reaching out to the humanity trampled by crisis. It’s not even donating money but extending selves for a cause. A commendable move to make the world a better to live in, a particular expression of solidarity toward the crisis in their unique and tiny thoughtful way. It’s all about
shrugging off that inexplicable inertia to be part of a bigger world!
Agree with you. Money is money, whether given with a “guilt-conscience ridden mind” or “hollywood mentality” – there is no good money or bad money.
Shripriya,
Thanks. I was checking out their site, very interesting.
Yeah, I know there are plenty of problems with project Red, but then, you wont buy a 250 buck thing just to give a 10 buck donation. Infact, will you buy a 250 buck thing to give even 50 bucks as donation?
Jyo,
Thanks. yeah, i know. Just cutting a check makes no sense unless and until you actually follow whats happening. Individual donors are in no postion to monitor this and thats why billions of dollars have simply vanished.
Biju,
Glad we agreed on something.
Thanks for your interesting comment.
I would like to mention here an NGO with a new idea: the visibility of the donor.
They collect funds, but the donor is visible, he can choose the project to support, and there is also the visibility of the work in the field. It seems that this new approach is very interesting. URL is http://www.donationpixel.org/index.php
The private charity could find here a way to support valuable projects in the third world.
Best regards to all,
Robert