Corporate charity — whether driven by gratitude, altruism or public relations — is still a form of redistribution. Conservatives don’t like it when the government does that. Why is it OK for your boss to take the fruit of your labors and spread it around as a form of corporate virtue signaling?
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25 replies on “Corporate Charity: Should the Boss Force You to Redistribute Your Money?”
Ironic that this video is blocked at my school district. Hahaha!
So this will echo much of what others have posted, but here is my true story from 15+ years ago. I was working at a small growing to mid-sized company. Our president was on the local board of the United Way. Now some of you may recall that United Way was particularly bad about how much money a) got to charities at all and b) stayed local. I was in the midst of a boycott of UW.
Much pressure from the boss. But I am Bronx born so he and I had a talk. I explained to him where my families charitable giving went, and while one of those charities was on the list, why should they get 60% of my donation instead of 100%. He got mad, because as a board member he wanted a high percentage of employees giving.
I told him if he wanted me to support UW, he needed to use his position to reform UW first.
He was still irked, but I knew that principles matter so tough. Made me feel better about myself. I think he actually respected me a little more since I stood up to him. Not many did.
Good for you, Ralph. Corporate pressure to give to charity isn’t charity. It’s strong arming.
There is no space between Bill’s opinion on this and mine. I worked for a (large, >1000 person) organization within Boeing. There was extreme pressure to “donate” to United Way (and, in point of fact, my boss at one time was the United Way Chairman).
I am proud to say, that by the time I retired I was the only person in the entire organization never to have succumbed to the pressure. I kept my money. It went to me, my wife, and my kids. It did not go to some useless administrator.
I was waiting for someone to say this. The con of these non profits is in the administration fees, the advertising/outreach, and filing fees. Just another way for employers to get some of that labor costs back.
MY company does it through their profit sharing ponzi scam and 401k.
There is a way you can do corporate charity ethically, and I think my company does it right. They do not deduct anything from paycheck. Instead, I pay into (via PayPal, I believe) a corporate foundation where the money is supposedly earmarked for the charity of my choice, and supposedly matched by the company. I say “supposedly” because I can’t really track any of it, but I have confidence that the company does what it claims to do because monkeying around with charitable contributions is a quick way to end up neighbors with Paul Manafort. My contributions are all tax deductible for me as well. The foundation comes up sometimes in corporate communications, and it’s mentioned during benefits enrollment, but I’ve never felt coerced to take part. My company also donates hours that I could use to do charity work on company time, but I haven’t taken advantage of that yet. To me, this makes things like the CFC even more outrageous, when you know there is a respectful and ethical way to encourage employees to contribute time and money to charity.
I had no problem making, or using, payroll deductions to make a contribution to a charity, such as United Way, because my company asked if I wanted to give. I was never forced to give to any charity.
I also had no problem with my Union Dues being paid vis payroll deduction when I was employed by/in a union shop. Payroll deduction was quick and easy, plus it was one less bill to pay per month. My union dues only amounted to twice my hourly wage per month.
I would have a problem with an employer who says, mandates, you will give five percent of your salary to charity “X” as a requirement of employment with that company. Now if my employer wants to use part of the company’s profits to support a local charitable organization, say my local PBS Station, I would also have no problem with that either. I worked for one company that supported the United Performing Arts Fund (UPAF), and I was encouraged to lend my support to that organization as well, but I had the choice to give or not to give. As long as I could choose not to give, I didn’t have the problem with being asked once per year.
In the same vein, look up “Combined Federal Campaign”.
Military and federal employees are annually subjected to the “highly encouragement” of this “voluntary” charitable contributing.
“No, don’t worry; this won’t affect your career in any way. Hey, isn’t your Promotion Recommendation File going to the board next week?”
There are two types of charity that a corporation can support. 1) where they deduct from your paycheck with your approval and 2) where they contribute from their profits.
Yes, we were all pressured to give to the United Way, but I never did as I never had heard of anyone that had received any benefits from them. What a company chooses to do with a portion of their profits is entirely up to them.
One minor point of contention regarding our government’s foreign aid seemingly being less than other countries – our military subsidizes global security. How many other countries spend as much to send its sons & daughters all over the globe to keep the world safe?
My biggest complaint about the ‘so-called’ Corporate Charity is the CEO gets all the credit.
Bill. Bill. Bill.
I buy my own ink, steal from the office for printer paper, stay after hours *without* pay to get lesson plans together, talk to distressed parents after hours, comb the internet for resources to use because we have to follow the schoolwide curriculum, but differentiated for our students.
The budget the school district has allotted for these volunteer days would help alleviate some of that pressure, and maybe get me the most recent edition of my reading program on a later version of Windows.
You say I am weak for not walking away. Tell that to the young woman who burst out crying when she thought I was retiring.
Some jobs are a lot more than just jobs, and are not that easy to walk away from. Just food for thought.
Friday – my wife had her final “evaluation” today. She is retiring after 32 years because teaching is not the same. And it is mostly the bureaucratic bs that gets in the way. However, my point in bringing this up is that when I got home from Deacon’s meeting Sunday afternoon, there was my wife polishing her lesson plans and putting together cool activities so that when the ladies from the state came in, she’d have something cool for the kids to work on. She had been up to the school after service, on Sunday.
All those extra administrators acting as coaches and evaluators filling in forms for the next program would be much better serving the community as actual teachers helping reduce class sizes.
First, God Bless your wife for going the extra mile, even during her retirement year. I’ve seen a lot of teachers just phoning it in during their last year, So many kudos to Mrs. Ralph!
Second, those that make the decisions on how our students should lean are the last people who should have that honor. The rule of thumb: The farther away and up the ladder a teacher gets from the classroom, the more classroom skills they lose. Every damn time.
I have a HUGE problem with this. Here’s why.
I recently found out that every person working in my school district receives 2 paid volunteer days to work at a non profit organization.
No problem with that.
My problem lies when teachers are marching in my state capital on May 1 to ask for more teacher pay, better working conditions etc. NO mention of giving back those volunteer days for the cause.
Meanwhile there is over a million dollars in this “Community Days” budget, and I’m desperately trying to keep an outdated Windows OS to be able to use an antiquated reading program that the district no longer purchases.
Screw the altruism. Give me supplies so I can teach my kids to read. Volunteer on your own damn time. Not on the taxpayers dime. And not on the backs of my students’ literacy.
If 51% of employees decided that every employee at the corporation is going to donate to charity, that would be unfair to the 49%. If 51% of the stockholders vote to have the corporation fund some charity, is that fair to the 49%?
The problem with giving to the United Way or the Red Cross or any other large umbrella group is that so little of your dollar gets to the intended recipient, because so much is taken up in salaries and branding and advertising. (There are plenty of other problems too, of course, but this is the largest and simplest.)
The principle of subsidiarity is what we should follow with charitable giving. That is, the best (both efficiently and morally) charitable giving is one on one. It benefits both the giver and the receiver. The worst form of charitable giving is to a large umbrella organization, or via payroll taxes to the federal government. The latter is not charity at all (as discussed in the video).
I have a lot more to say about this, but instead I’ll add it to my list of future blog posts to write.
I know exactly what you mean about the high pressure United Way campaigns Scott. I spent 35+ years working in major corporations and every one of them had very aggressive United Way campaigns, and their preferred method was a direct deduction from your paycheck. I got to say, I had some cynical thoughts more than once seeing how the pressure was applied.
When I was in the Navy, leaders were evaluated, in part, by having a 100% contribution to United Way. THAT was some pressure…
You beat me to it…CFC….and, not only that, you were told, by grade level, how much you were expected to give.
It was very much the same in Federal Law Enforcement.Gave up on it the year they didn’t have Salvation Army on the list but did have several pro abortion “charities”.
Ah, yes … the Combined Federal Campaign. What a complete scam that was. My commanding officers in the USCG made it clear by implication that full participation was expected. I refused.
By far and away, the most coercive corporate charity scam I ever encountered was the CFC. The United Way must have some powerful friends in DC. One must suspect that that money is somehow getting kicked back to certain places.
Charity, like so many words today, has had it definition watered down over the years. It is not just the act of giving but more of a state of mind that you are giving with love (agapé). Any other form of giving is not charity. Theologically, the following verse makes no moral sense with today’s definition. “And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity. 1cor 13:13 KJV.
Even in the 1828 Websters dictionary it is listed as:
CHARITY, noun
1. In a general sense, love, benevolence, good will; that disposition of heart which inclines men to think favorably of their fellow man, and to do them good. In a theological sense, it includes supreme love to God, and universal good will to men.
Before listening, my take.
My agreed upon paycheck, is mine to do with as I please. I’ll put it to use in my own way. Hands off do not deduct from what is mine.
Companies are free to distribute the profits they generate after their expenses (employee paychecks would fall under expenses), voluntarily.