It sounds like a deal too good to pass up. Buy a headache remedy and help out medical research, or pick up a record album and feed a starving child in Africa.
It's a link between charity and business, a marketing device, that the Council of Better Business Bureaus says is sometimes an alliance aimed more at boosting sales than at helping the helpless.The council's philanthropic advisory service, in a report issued this week, complained that businesses often fail to mention basic information, such as how much the charity gets from each purchase. The council says it has found "examples of vague, unclear and even misleading charity-business marketing promotions."
A recent issue of Defenders magazine, the publication of the Defenders of Wildlife, ran an advertisement for Visa and MasterCard that promised to make a donation toward the good of the planet.
"Use the Defenders of Wildlife Visa and MasterCard credit cards," the advertisement said. "Every time you do, Bank of New England, N.A. donates a portion of your purchase price toward Defenders' programs to protect wildlife and preserve wildlife habitat. An additional donation will be given each year you renew the cards."
How big a donation? The ad didn't say. Defenders of Wildlife says the bank's contract demands that stay secret.
"We're not suggesting that all charity-business marketing ads are concerned," said Bennett Weiner, vice president of the council's philanthropic advisory service. "The majority include disclosures that are accurate and truthful."
Weiner said Tuesday that there are few national examples of an outfit simply running off with money it had promised to charity.
"In terms of situations in which the charity doesn't get the money as promised, that happens more on a regional level," he said. Most recently, some local campaigns promising to donate money for U.S. troops in the Persian Gulf weren't on the level, he said.
The council is largely concerned with the failure to disclose the terms of the charitable donations. Along with the increase in charity-business promotions over the past decade, there has been a rise in the number that don't reveal what the council thinks they should.
The group cited a "leading U.S. analgesic products manufacturer" that offered to donate up to $400,000 to medical research based on consumers' purchases. What the manufacturer, left nameless in the council's report, didn't mention was that it had promised to make that donation regardless of the product's sales.
The council also said that people buying the record "We Are The World," which sold 4 million copies, were told that part of the money would go to feed the starving in Africa. But purchasers were not told how much.