Congrats you win. NT>everybody else. Japan deserves better than to have companies sell t-shirts to raise money for them. Your right. Either do it right or don't do it all.
I provided, and others have mentioned, a number of different examples of people who are creating incentives to donate that are just as efficient as a direct donation. This isn't about NikeTalk. We're certainly not the only ones who care about this - but we
do care about it, and that's why our fundraisers prize efficiency. It has nothing to do with promoting ours over someone else's. If it were just about making OURS a success, we wouldn't have allowed people to post about other Japan fundraisers in our fundraising thread. In years past, we've just created a pinned topic with donation information for a number of different NGOs supporting disaster relief efforts and encouraged people to give directly. None of those donations would in any way be associated with NikeTalk. It was then, and it is now, just about making sure that resources were being delivered to those poised to make optimal use of them.
We talk about all these "other people" who don't care at all about Japan - yet are, for some reason, especially interested in looking like they do. Of course, I don't see anyone admitting as much here.
So, what about those who
do care? If you want to support Japan for its own sake, why wouldn't you even be interested in finding out how much of your purchase price actually goes to the relief effort? Doesn't that
matter?
Meth, how would you feel if they gave t shirts to people who made direct donations of the same price they're asking for?
i didnt even consider the argument you posed.....
but its a valid argument.
That would be better, obviously, because then at least Supreme would be sacrificing something in order to have a large donation associated with them.
You know, a lot of this is ego. It's like when a celebrity decides they need their OWN charity instead of just supporting the best NGO in the sector their area of interest. If you start your own charity, you'll need to duplicate all of the infrastructure associated with an organization of that size. And why? So it'll have YOUR name on it?
A lot of these companies are recouping the cost of the shirt and likely even claiming the eventual donation, which you're funding, as a tax deduction. Whether it's well intended or not, it does function as a promotion for their company. You're paying a substantial amount, above and beyond what will go to the relief effort, to walk around with a shirt to make the statement that you and Supreme care about Japan. Let's face it: that's about vanity.
People always look for reasons not to give. Many people are concerned about how X% of a nonprofit's budget is used on fundraising, how a bunch of it is used to send people postcards with polar bears on them or commercials airing on the Hallmark channel at 5am, or how the executives make hundreds of thousands of dollars per year in salary. If you're gonna do that - if you're gonna be critical about the efficiency of the charity itself and you care about where your money goes - why the hell wouldn't you care about the efficiency of an external fundraiser? People were furious about the Red Cross scandals following Hurricane Katrina. Do you really think a larger portion of your Red Cross donation was wasted than will be wasted if you pay $35 for a t-shirt and only half of that goes to charity (and, in all probability, that
same Red Cross?)
I don't remember ANYONE saying, in the wake of the Red Cross scandals, "yeah, but the Red Cross advertised so effectively. They raised a ton of money from people who've never even heard of other relief organizations. These people wouldn't have donated at all if not for the Red Cross. So what if it was mismanaged or if some of their contractors stole a portion of it? That's better than
nothing."
At the end of the day, it's rationalized selfishness. The consumers are less critical of a Supreme t-shirt that benefits the Red Cross than they are of the Red Cross itself because they WANT to buy a Supreme t-shirt and they DON'T want to donate directly to the Red Cross. They'll search for reasons to justify the former and excuse their abstention from the latter. You can say, "that's exactly why these things are great, because it gets SOMETHING out of selfish people," but you can create incentives that, by their nature, are far more efficient than printing up t-shirts. If Supreme wants to help, great, but I'd be happier if they put some thought into efficiency.
