| |
|
Principles
What is Profit-Donation Capitalism?
Profit-Donation Capitalism, (PDC) is a proposal for a new
funding strategy that empowers consumers to direct
profits from the products they buy to
helping end global poverty and to fund other urgent causes and charities. Through PDC, profits are
channeled away from corporations and toward important causes
like poverty reduction, health care, education and the
environment. In this way, PDC redefines how and why consumers
buy their products.
Through PDC, politicians, philanthropists and commonweal organizations
create Profit-Donating Businesses (PDBs) that sell products, and
donate 100 percent of the profit to
world hunger relief efforts, and other important
causes. Dozens of successful PDBs now exist, like the over
one dozen listed
here. Hundreds more can be created to compete with conventional
businesses for the patronage of consumers throughout the world. FAQs
How Does Profit-Donation Capitalism
Fund Important Causes?
Consumers would choose products sold by Profit-Donating
Businesses over the same products offered by conventional
businesses so that 100 percent of the profit from their
purchases can be used to fund the
charities and causes they care about,
like ending global poverty.
For example, a PDB named "AIDS Relief"
would donate
its profit to organizations working to treat and prevent
HIV and
AIDS. It
sells a margarine product that is equal in price and quality to
margarine products now offered by conventional businesses. At
supermarkets, many consumers would choose AIDS Relief's margarine over
other margarines so that the profit from their purchase
can be used to fund AIDS/HIV treatment and prevention. FAQs
Will Consumers Buy Products from
Profit-Donation Businesses?
To gauge how well Profit-Donating Business products would sell
at supermarkets, the author asked 100 shoppers the following
question:
"If your supermarket offered new food
products that were equal in price and quality to the products
that you now buy, and you knew that 100 percent of the profit
from these new products would be used to
end world hunger,
would you buy these new products?"
92 of the 100 shoppers answered "yes,"
demonstrating extraordinarily robust public support for the PDC
funding
strategy. FAQs
How Widely Can Profit-Donation
Capitalism's Selling Point be Used?
The PDC selling point of donating 100 percent of product profits
to causes and charities can aggressively compete
against any product that can be matched in quality and price.
For many of the hundreds of thousands of these
products in today's market, a large
share of consumers would choose a PDBs' products over those of
competitors in order to help fund an
end to global poverty, or to fund a variety of popular causes
and charities. Fully implemented, Profit-Donation Capitalism can
channel billions of new dollars to our world's important causes
each year. FAQs
What do Consumers Think about Profit-Donation
Capitalism?
Consumers would value how Profit-Donation Capitalism enhances their
daily shopping routine by providing them opportunities to
help end world hunger and
fund other important
causes and charities through their purchases. They would
especially value the opportunity to support causes at no personal cost
by buying from PDBs the products they would ordinarily buy
from conventional businesses, and paying the same price
for the same quality. FAQs
How Can Businesses that Give Away their
Profit Stay in Business?
Many successful businesses, like those listed on this website,
now donate all of their profit to causes and charities.
For example, over the last two decades, Newman's Own, a PDB
established in 1982 by actor Paul Newman and author Alex
Hotchner, has donated over $200 million to thousands of
charities. During the last twenty-five years, they has grown from
selling one product, salad dressing, to offering more than forty-eight products. Not-For-Profit
organizations have also created PDBs to fund their work.
The
United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), earns $130 million
yearly just from selling greeting cards. FAQs
Goals
How Does Profit Donation Capitalism
Benefit Our World?
1. By Directly Funding Causes and Charities
By offering consumers PDC alternatives to products sold by
conventional corporations, Profit-Donating Businesses generate
substantial and continuing additional revenues for popular
causes like poverty reduction, education, health care, and environmental
protection.
2. By Transferring Political Power from the Rich to the
Public Good.
Important popular causes are often under-funded because rich
individuals and corporations spend huge sums lobbying against
these initiatives. As consumers re-direct their purchasing
power away from products sold by conventional corporations and
toward products sold by Profit-Donating Businesses, the rich
earn less revenue to finance their lobbying. At the same
time, PDB beneficiary causes receive more revenue to finance
lobbying for increased public support.
3. By Empowering the Poor to Help Themselves.
When poor people throughout our world now buy products, the rich corporations who sell these products become richer, while the
poor remain poor or become poorer. PDC empowers
the poor
worldwide to help raise themselves out of poverty by buying
products whose profit is used to fund the war against global poverty.
FAQs
Stages
How Can Profit-Donation Capitalism be
Established World-Wide?
Establishing PDC throughout the world as an intelligent,
compassionate, capitalism will require organization and
collaboration. Stages in this process would include: 1) Concept Dissemination and Promotion, 2)
Organizational Leadership 3) Market Research, 4) PDB Ownership
Solicitation, and 5) Market Promotion. FAQs
1. Concept Dissemination and Promotion
Making Profit-Donation Capitalism a global reality will require extensive
concept dissemination. This website at
www.profitdonationcapitalism.org is a first step that introduces
PDC. The next step is for governments, philanthropists,
not-for-profit organizations, academics and journalists to
study the PDC
concept and promote it to the international public. As
this process progresses, a leadership will need to take
responsibility for implementing
subsequent stages of PDC development. FAQs
2. Organizational Leadership
While Profit-Donation Capitalism has been developing
independently, as the PDBs listed on this site
demonstrate, a centralized organizational leadership can more
quickly spearhead the establishment of
an extensive global network of PDBs. This PDC leadership
will need to recruit the personnel and obtain the funding to
establish PDC throughout the world. FAQs
3. Market Research
So that financial institutions, not-for-profit organizations and
individuals can confidently invest the capital needed to create
new Profit-Donating Businesses, market research will need
to be
conducted to answer questions such as:
- How strongly and
broadly does the global public support the
concept and goals of Profit-Donation Capitalism?
- Which markets are
best suited for introducing new PDB products?
(Supermarkets, for example, have key advantages
over department and specialty stores.)
- Which
products are consumers most willing to buy from
PDBs?
-
Which specific causes are
consumers most willing to support through their purchases? FAQs
|
How
Can Market Research Be Inexpensively Acquired?
Profit-Donating Businesses have an advantage over competing
conventional businesses in acquiring market research.
Because of their philanthropic purpose, and because their
selling point of donating all profit is a relatively new concept
within fields like economics, marketing, advertising, and
not-for-profit management, PDBs can have the research
conducted cost-free by the marketing departments of colleges and universities throughout the world.
PDBs and academic institutions can establish "Research for
Donation" alliances. For example, a PDB selling products
to fund for childhood education may contract with a university’s
education department. The university's marketing department
can then conduct the PDB's market research in exchange for some of the PDB's profit being donated to the education
center. Contractual collaborations between PDBs and
universities can generate an extensive body of product-specific
market findings worth hundreds of thousands of dollars if
conducted by professional firms. FAQs
4. PDB Ownership Solicitation
Who Will Establish New Profit-Donating
Businesses?
After research demonstrates wide public support for
Profit-Donation Capitalism, philanthropists, not-for-profit
organizations and political groups can begin creating new PDBs.
Philanthropists can create PDBs that would, over time, generate
more revenue for beneficiary causes than their traditional
direct donations.
Following the example of UNICEF, who since 1949 has generated
over $1 billion from greeting card sales,
not-for-profit corporations can create PDB "arms" to generate
sales revenues. Politicians and celebrities are also ideal
candidates for establishing PDBs. Owning a PDB that funds
a popular cause could prove an important component of their public relations campaigns. FAQs
5. Market Promotion
How Should New Profit-Donation
Businesses Products be Introduced into Consumer Markets?
In most markets, selling products with little or no
collaboration among competitors is necessary. To ensure
the greatest success of Profit-Donation Capitalism and of
individual PDBs, extensive collaboration among existing and
prospective PDBs is a wiser strategy. The media now covers new
PDBs who periodically introduce new products. However, if
several dozen PDBs orchestrated a simultaneous launch
of new products to benefit one or more popular causes, media
coverage would be far more extensive.
To attract broad media coverage worth millions of dollars in
publicity, the PDC organizational leadership should facilitate
PDB collaboration in ways that include the
following:
- A simultaneous introduction of as many new PDBs
selling new products to benefit one or more popular
causes and charities will attract the broadest media
coverage; an invaluable asset to all PDBs.
- Initially, PDBs
should refrain from competing in markets against
other PDBs. Especially in the early stages of PDC
implementation, minimizing such competition will ensure
the strongest success for all PDBs.
-
PDBs should be
assisted in sharing market research findings amongst
themselves. Naturally, this is best
accomplished when PDBs are not competing against each other in
specific markets. FAQs
|
Implementations
There are various ways to implement PDC. The most simple
strategy is for a very rich individual or organization to
finance the establishment of several dozen new PDBs and
orchestrate a simultaneous launching of
several dozen products.
Another strategy would enlist popular celebrities as has been
done by campaigns like
USA for Africa, Band Aid, Live 8, and Farm Aid. Following
is a proposal for such a campaign:
|
"We Sell for the
World" - "We Buy for the World" |
Premise
In the first few days of 1985, Lionel Richie and Michael
Jackson wrote "We are the World," and on January 28, 1985,
forty-five musical superstars recorded the song.
(http://www.usaforafrica.org)
Twenty days later, attorney Marty
Rogol created United Support of Artists for Africa (USA for
Africa) to distribute proceeds from the
project to famine-stricken Africa. Released March 8, 1985,
"We Are The World" became the fastest selling single in music industry history.
Revenues from the single, the album, the video and other
merchandise
raised about $50 million for famine
relief.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Are_The_World)
FAQs
Plan
A Global PDC implementation project is conducted
through campaigns titled "We Sell for the World" and
"We Buy for
the World." These titles offer the following
benefits:
1. They are
an excellent spin-off from "We Are the World,"
coming about twenty-two years after that historic event.
2. They concisely articulate the
purpose, strategy, and widest vision of the PDC
campaign.
3. "We Sell for the World" establishes an identity for companies that donate their
profit to the public good. "We Buy for the World"
establishes an identity for
organizations and individuals who will make consumers throughout the world aware of these
cause-supporting companies and their products.
FAQs
|
The plan is presented to 20-40 celebrities who are asked
to market (essentially endorse) profit-donating food products to be sold in
supermarkets worldwide under the banner "We Sell for the World - We Buy for the World."
The following background data describes how easily and
successfully these celebrity-run businesses can be created:
In 1982, Paul Newman invested $20 thousand to launch a new
product, "Newman's Own" salad dressing.
Outsourcing manufacturing and distribution, the company's entire staff was Mr. Newman and
his friend, A. E. Hotchner working full time, a part time
secretary and a part time bookkeeper. Soon after, they began to market new products like
spaghetti sauce, (1983) and popcorn, (1984).
Following is a tally of their profits those first years, all
of it donated to charity:
|
In 1983, (their first
year), they earned $920,000.00.
In 1984, they earned $2.5 million.
In 1987, they earned $5 million. (Their total donated
earnings
to date was $15 million.) |
This data shows how quickly
Newman's Own generated substantial profits, and how simple an
operation it was during those first years. Organized
as We Sell for the World, a group of celebrities
could successfully market food products
using the Newman's Own model. To learn more about how
Paul Newman's and A. E. Hotchner created Newman's Own, (defying
the dire predictions of industry "experts") please refer to
their 2003 book titled Shameless Exploitation in Pursuit of
the Common Good.
Newman's Own made those huge early profits without any
advertising. Instead, he held several product launch events
that generated enormous publicity world wide. The We Sell for the World celebrities
would use this same publicity strategy.
Imagine 20-40 of the musicians who recorded "We Are
The World" selling food products to
fund global poverty relief under an international campaign titled
"Food for
Food," within the wider banner of We Sell for the World. The
publicity generated from this orchestrated product launch would
likely earn over $15 million in profit during the first year
for
each of the marketed products.
The celebrities, acting as spokespersons for
the Food for Food campaign, would also be launching
the wider We Sell for the World campaign that
would invite other celebrities, philanthropists, and
not-for-profit organizations to market their own profit-donating
products. Not-for-profit anti-poverty organizations would launch a sister campaign called We Buy for the World.
This project would provide
the expanding network of profit-donating businesses free
worldwide publicity through websites and other venues.
While We Sell for the World is an ambitious campaign, it is
logistically simple. The right promoters could convince
forty celebrities to market these
products under Food for Food. These
food products could be developed and marketed in under nine months.
For all
of this to happen, promoters of USA for Africa, Band Aid, Live
8, Farm Aid and other established celebrity-led campaigns
need to be contacted, and
asked to organize the
campaigns.
Complete list of vocalists for "We
are the World"
Dan Aykroyd
Harry Belafonte
Lindsey Buckingham
Kim Carnes
Ray Charles
Bob Dylan
Sheila E
Bob Geldof
Daryl Hall
James Ingram
Jackie Jackson
LaToya Jackson
Marlon Jackson
|
Michael Jackson
Randy Jackson
Tito Jackson
Al Jarreau
Waylon Jennings
Billy Joel
Cyndi
Lauper
Huey Lewis and the News
Kenny Loggins
Bette Midler
Willie Nelson
John Oates
Jeffrey Osborne |
Steve Perry
The Pointer Sisters
Lionel Richie
Smokey Robinson
Kenny Rogers
Diana Ross
Paul Simon
Bruce Springsteen
Tina Turner
Dionne Warwick
Stevie Wonder
FAQs |
The song; "We are the World"
There comes a time
When we head a certain call
When the world must come together as one
There are people dying
And it's time to lend a hand
To life, the greatest gift of all
We can't go on
Pretending day by day
That someone, somewhere will soon make a change
We are all a part of
God's great big family
And the truth, you know love is all we need
[Chorus]
We are the world
We are the children
We are the ones who make a brighter day
So let's start giving
There's a choice we're making
We're saving our own lives
It's true we'll make a better day
Just you and me
Send them your heart
So they'll know that someone cares
And their lives will be stronger and free
As God has shown us by turning stone to bread
So we all must lend a helping hand
[Chorus]
We are the world
We are the children
We are the ones who make a brighter day
So let's start giving
There's a choice we're making
We're saving our own lives
It's true we'll make a better day
Just you and me
When you're down and out
There seems no hope at all
But if you just believe
There's no way we can fall
Well, well, well, well, let us realize
That a change will only come
When we stand together as one
[Chorus]
We are the world
We are the children
We are the ones who make a brighter day
So let's start giving
There's a choice we're making
We're saving our own lives
It's true we'll make a better day
Just you and me FAQs
|
