I just got back from my class on Corporate Social Responsibility and Social Entrepreneurship and I am very bubbly, as I usually am after this class.
Today we picked apart cause-related marketing ie breast cancer pink campaign, HIV-AIDS red campaign, any company that donates a % of profit, or proceeds, etc. to charity.
On one hand, it's kind of ridiculous; companies are using a disease to gain them more exposure, and positive exposure at that. They are likely to make more money by attaching their name to a good cause, even if at the end of the day charities would be better off if people just donated to them seperately if that was something they valued. Once you get past the fact that we don't know how much of the profit or what the profit is - that is being donated, there is still know way of knowing what the charity is doing or how efficient it is.
For example, there is treatment for HIV-AIDS but most of the people that need it can't afford it. So what is project RED going to do about that? I buy a red ipod cause I want $10 to go to a charity who donates money to the Global Fund. After everybody has a red ipod* and a red phone and red clothes. I'm sure the Global Fund is well run and is doing great things. But more money seems to be spent by these companies in advertising the fact that they are part of Project RED than is actually donated to the Global Fund.
*(meaning Apple makes tons of money - even though they are the WORST offender in terms of creating hazardous, non-recyclable material waste pollution worldwide according to Greenpeace, but we'll deal with that once we figure out this whole AIDS issue)
An AIDS activist I met on PEI mentioned that they were developing an immunisation for HIV-AIDS, and when they found that it worked better on black people than on anybody else, they scrapped it. So, there are things that charities can't do, no matter how much money they make. Like prevent pharmaceutical companies from wanting to please their shareholders by earning profit, for example.
On the other hand, who cares? We spent alot of money on silly things and one fraction of a percent of those dollars might as well go towards fighting a cure for breast cancer or fighting HIV-AIDS. Plus the whole "walk for the cure" thing is a nice community building exercise. As long as charities are busy plugging away, filing in the gaps, problems will be temporarily fixed or hidden and society will depend on the goodwill of volunteers and shoppers on the look-out for pink and red.
That said, check out Earthwater.org. This dude is from Edmonton and he started his company with very specific core values, and a guiding quote: "if you had the chance, would you change the world?" He answered yes to this question and now he's exploiting the fact that the luxury/bottled water industry is growing exponentially and donating the money directly to UNHCR - avoiding the bureaucracy costs that the UN is criticized for. The money is being used to build wells in places where it is needed, so more people have access to water.
