Donating to for-profits seems somehow wrong: Have your say

Would you donate your excess clothing to a for profit entity if you knew they were going to capitalise on it?  Or do you deliberately donate your cast-off clothes and toys to charity so they can help others or be sold to provide funding for charity activities?

The Sydney Morning Herald investigative journalist, Rory Callinan has uncovered a move by Westfield and Lend Lease to evict charity bins in their shopping centres and replace them with charity-like bins run by a for profit making entrepreneur who runs an international clothing recycling business.  And whilst it is a move that disturbs me, there is possibly has two ways of looking at it… so I thought it might make good fodder for discussion here today.

The SMH reports that there has been a nationwide “license arrangement” struck between the for-profit operator and the shopping centres that is resulting in charity bins for the Smith Family and the Endeavour Foundation being ousted and being replaced by bins labelled with the branding of Make a Wish.

If you have a little capitalist in you, you’ll no doubt appreciate that these bins are being put in place to collect things that you believe are waste products in your world so that they can be recycled.  And perhaps you don’t mind if someone savvy manages to profiteer out of it, so long as the items can get to those who need them more than you.  But does that include it ending up in a for-profit recycled clothing shop, or chain of them, as the shops’ stock?

If you sit on the side of many, supporting not for profits, you’ll no doubt believe that when you donate something it is because you believe it has some life left in it and that you would like it to go to someone more needy than yourself.  You’ll likely feel like you are doing good by donating, and that donating to a for-profit entity takes some of the goodness out of the deed.

The Fairfax report uncovered the operators as being the owner of two NSW-based companies, King Cotton Australia Pty Ltd and Horizon Storm Pty Ltd, both of which are led by Christoforos Dimou, 70, according to ASIC records.  The same person is also linked with upmarket recycled clothing chain in Sydney called U-turn.

The alarming part to me is the hazy line the company is walking by branding these bins with not-for-profit brands of two organisations, Make-a-Wish and Learning Links.  The SMH quoted Make-a-Wish  saying they have negotiated a guaranteed donation of at least $270,000 over three years in exchange for using its Make A Wish brand on 244 bins spread across NSW, Victoria and Western Australia.

Perhaps this is enough money to justify their involvement, as this amount of money will deliver a lot of wishes… But does that make it right to make this entity look charitable when they are in fact a for-profit company through and though.

Share your thoughts on the Make a Wish Bins today, and how you feel about hazy line being drawn between for profit and not for profit.  Is this just good recycling or is this a little hazier through the branding of the bins?  Will you put your things in them or will you go the extra mile to donate to a legitimate charity? 

image: as appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald