Profiting From Charity « The Blog According to Buzz

I find it odd that at this charitable time of year, food drives and toy drives are all done at full retail.

I actually got a press release from a toy store after the Salvation Army break in advertising nothing more than the store was offering a bin for donations. No discounts, they weren’t packing up old stock to donate.. no, they were just accepting toy donations, at their toy store.

They were, in essence, trying to profit from the tragedy. The store was saying “hey, you want to help out? come and buy here and drop em off here.”

It would be nice if stores that offer the goods that are needed this time of year (food and toys) would offer a discount on the goods that people want to donate.

Feel like tossing a mac and cheese in the food bank box? That will be 59 cents, not 99.

Want to give them a big pack of diapers? That’s $19, not $30. Yknow, get things down closer to the true cost of the good.

Sure, the store should get something for their trouble of stocking the shelves and having staff, but should they be profiting off our desire to give at this time of year?

If you want to help a charity, give them cash. You get a tax receipt and they know the best way to find efficiencies in using that money to run the full distance.

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Tags: charity

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 9th, 2008 at 6:28 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Lisa

I've been saying this for years -- as much as we want to believe otherwise there is no such thing as altruism. You're dead right about giving cash to charities. I was an executive director for 7 years, and a volunteer for 15, and I know that cash goes so much further than other types of donations. Instead of going to Safeway first, give a few bucks to the food bank so they can buy at cost.

GregEh

Is it right for charities to profit from charity? Non-profit seems to be big business in Vancouver.

nel peach

Hurah for posting this Buzz ....cash is the answer and a tax receipt for the donor :-)

Carolyn

Absolutely right Buzz. If I remember correctly, when we did Food Bank promotions we were told that the Food Bank could essentially double all cash donations because they buy at cost. If you give $1 to the Food Bank they can buy $2 worth of food, which means your cash is much better in the hands of the Food Bank than your cans.

Having said that, I remember Safeway doing a promtion where you could buy $5/$10/$15 food bank kits full of "essentials" which were packaged at cost, although I don't know if they do it any more.

JWRmedia

I have much, much more respect for the places that offer charity-type events or offers year round and not just for a month or two before Christmas just as a gimmick to draw in customers or be in the spotlight.

People are in need of things more than just 2-3 months out of the year.

Roger Hutchison

Cost Cutter (in Bellingham) does something like this. They have full grocery sacks placed near checkout that sell for $10. You pick up one of the sacks on your way through checkout, pay for it, and place it on the food bank shelf on your way out.

For me it feels like I did something a bit more than if I just give cash. I physically helped give someone a sack of groceries.

I can only assume that the value of the groceries in the sack is equal or above the $10 retail value.