Spare Change for Checkout Charity
Thankfully, I am not the only person who gets bent, just a little, by “checkout charities.” At the register, checkout charities are just AI versions of the same guys I see everyday at the same corner standing around looking pretty well fed sometimes, with a sign asking for spare change. If I am stopped at a red light, I give a few coins if I have them in the cup holder. Right outside the grocery store door, that local baseball team or those fire station guys are similar though usually better dressed. They make me feel the same way, whether its a computer, some jovial guys in fire boots, or people at a busy intersection. They all make me feel like Randy in the South Park episode pasted above. Its comic relief against constant requests for spare change.
Anyway, from the Sydney Morning Herald, July 2, 2023:
I’m picking up a $1.50 coffee from the servo, and the lady asks if I would like to donate $2 to kids with cancer. I squirm awkwardly before saying “no thanks”. I imagine she must be wondering how this degenerate demon clawed its way out of the seventh circle of Hell. What kind of person doesn’t want to help kids with cancer? “We already give to a few places,” I say, needing to justify my morality. I wonder if I should pull out my bank statements to show her evidence. Maybe if I grabbed her by the shoulders and said, “I’M A GOOD PERSON,” I could get the message across, but I don’t think good people grab other people by the shoulders. It’s only two bucks; why am I such a scrooge?
Woolworths asks customers if they would like to round up their payment to the nearest dollar to donate to a specified charity, like Foodbank or the Salvation Army. Cotton On sells charity silicon wristbands, shopping bags, or water bottles at the checkout (just don’t think about the environmental impact of these trinkets). A recent survey by Philanthropy Australia found that Australia gives 0.81 per cent of our national GDP, which ranks us 19th in the world behind Britain on 0.96 per cent, Canada (1 per cent), New Zealand (1.84 per cent) and the US (2.1 per cent). Apparently, we’re not as generous as we think, but is that why we get so uncomfortable when confronted with checkout charity?
Philosopher Peter Singer says in his 1971 essay, Famine, Affluence, and Morality, that we tend to frame charity as something optional. “The charitable man may be praised, but the man who is not charitable is not condemned,” he writes. He argues that we are morally obliged to give money away from our position of relative affluence in the world.
I went and read Peter Singer’s essay (its only about 7 pages) and that guy actually wants us all to give until it hurts. That we all have a moral duty to give, so that the person who does not should be condemned more than the person who gives should be praised. The person giving is only doing what he is supposed to do, according to Singer. Sounds like Peter doesn’t do his own grocery shopping if you ask me. I also did some quick research on how much money is collected via checkout charities. That’s right, there is a whole industry devoted to checkout charity, though not for altruistic reasons necessarily. Take a look at this:
The largest point-of-sale fundraising efforts by American retailers collected $749 million in consumer donations in 2022, a 24% increase from 2020, according to the biennial Charity Checkout Champions study released today by Engage for Good.
The sixth edition of this study of $1 million+ campaigns found 77 programs that reached that revenue level, up from 76 in 2020. “This impressive growth is a testament to consumers’ continued willingness to chip in for a wide variety of good causes in partnership with retailers,” said Engage for Good’s Alli Murphy who led the research effort. Collectively these leading programs have raised more than $6.7 billion over the last 30 years. The five largest US-based point-of-sale fundraising campaigns in 2022 were produced by:
eBay — $107 million (supporting a wide variety of nonprofits)
Albertsons — $67 million (supporting hunger relief, Ukraine aid and other charities)
Walgreens — $50 million (supporting Comic Relief)
Costco — $49 million (supporting Children’s Miracle Network Hospital)
PetSmart – $46 million (supporting PetSmart Charities)
Changes in the formats of checkout charity programs were a major factor in their growth, said Engage for Good President David Hessekiel. Integration of fundraising into electronic point-of-sale systems (as opposed to completely relying on human cashier asks) grew by 45% from 2020 to 2022. And the percentage of campaigns that allowed shoppers to round up their purchases to a whole dollar amount increased to 67%, a 43% increase from 2020.
The entire study is available for free download at https://engageforgood.com/meet-americas-charity-checkout-champions-2023/. The report provides a detailed list of the 77 $1 million+ programs and delves into topics such as consumer behavior, program formats, the impact of macro factors like inflation and program success strategies.
Checkout charity suggests one thing though. People give for a lot more reasons than tax deductions. According to this Tax Policy Center report, only 10% of checkout charity donors claim a tax deduction. Armed with this knowledge, and the fact that it is mostly big business anyway, I can now safely decline to “round up” or give at the checkout with guiltless impunity.
darryll k. jones