The Ethics of Public Giving

Over the past week the confrontation between the American Cancer Society and the militant atheist group calling itself the Foundation Beyond Belief has gotten a lot of attention on the Internet and occasionally even in the real world. As I noted in my earlier posts about the subject, I don’t think there’s a lot of ethical grey area in this specific case; the ACS is trying to maintain its usual quiet dignity while the atheists are using the situation to gain attention and forward their socio-political agenda. But the fact is that a lot of companies and non-profit organizations do support fundraising events in exchange for publicity and a non-specific upgrade to their public image, and the line between altruism and enlightened self-interest is not nearly as easy to draw as you might think. So I thought we should take a closer look…

As we’ve discussed before, it isn’t reasonable to expect a for-profit company to operate as a charity; the purpose of any corporation is to produce results through the concentration of capital that would not be possible for the individual investors working alone. Expecting a company to donate all of its assets – or even all of its profits – to charity is silly. But customer relations and public relations in general are legitimate parts of any business; customer loyalty increases sales and good relationships with the public can help you to avoid any number of legal, regulatory or legislative problems you might otherwise encounter. So corporate giving makes sense from a business standpoint; the question would appear to be at what point does it stop being something that you are doing because it is a pure and good act – something that is worth doing for its own sake – and at what point does it become something you are doing entirely for your own benefit?

This basic question is complicated by the fact that in many cases, donating very large amounts of money and/or time will inspire your beneficiary to recognize your support, whether by naming a building or an event or whatever after your organization or by advertising your support in their own publications. In the ACS case that came up this week, the large corporate donors would be featured on the Society’s own web pages, the promotional literature about the Relay for Life event, and eventually on a variety of television and Internet news sources (and probably print media as well) in addition to whatever tax advantages they might be able to pick up in the process. There’s no question that fifty or so fundraising teams each in at least two states (the minimum for inclusion in the National Partners Program) would raise a lot of money for cancer research, or that a lot of people would benefit from those donations; it’s even plausible to suggest that some of them will do more business with the sponsor corporations because they will be alive to do so. It’s highly doubtful that any of those people would care why your company supported the ACS, or that they would be grateful that you did…

Where the ethics of the situation becomes murky is where the donor organization is trying to get the most public-relations and publicity “bang” for their buck, as in the case of the Foundation Beyond Belief trying to get itself named to the National Partner Program for the Relay for Life events. If the requirement to be a National Partner is fielding at least 50 teams in each of at least 2 states of the Union, offering to field a single team clearly does not make the requirement (even if you can provide a matching donation for whatever that one team raises), and raising a huge stink about not being named a National Partner is clearly a publicity stunt. But at what point should such an offer be considered genuine? If the applicant manages to round up exactly 100 teams in two states, does that count? What happens if they can only come up with 89 teams, but each of those can double the national average of donations collected (making them the equivalent of 178 teams), should they be included? What about a group that won’t promise to field any specific number of teams, but is pledging to donate $10 million (the equivalent of about 3,700 regular teams) regardless of how many people they can get to show up?

No one is questioning the fact that corporate donations to a popular cause can also benefit the donor organization, and no sane person is going to question that any organization that is donating money and time to a worthwhile cost deserves to be recognized for their good works. But at what point does it stop being charity and become advertising?

It’s worth thinking about…