Don’t Bash Value of Corporate Giving
May 6, 1999 | Read Time: 1 minute
To the Editor:
Two letters to the editor in your April 8 issue — “Philip Morris’s Giving Is Publicity, Not Charity” and “More Marathon Funds Should Go to Research” — left me wondering why corporations even bother to give to charities and why charities even bother to raise funds.
Regardless of whether we call Philip Morris’s $10,000 food-bank contribution publicity or charity, and regardless of how much the company spent to publicize it, the fact remains that $10,000 is now in the hands of organizations that did not have that before.
As for the supposedly low percentage of Leukemia Society Team In Training funds that goes to leukemia research, how much of the money raised do you think came from new donors — people who’d never given to leukemia research before? How much money would these people have given if the Team In Training program did not exist? My guess is not much, if anything at all.
Have we lost the ability to be grateful for the good things that individuals and companies do? Or are we so greedy and quick to judge that what we have is never enough?
Go ahead, tell Philip Morris to stop its charitable contributions. Tell the Leukemia Society to cancel its Team In Training program. Where will that get us?
Daniel Meloy
Washington
