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Goals
How Does Profit Donation Capitalism
Help Our World?
1. By Directly Funding Causes and Charities
By offering shoppers PDC (Profit-Donation Capitalism)
alternatives to the products they now buy from
conventional corporations, Profit-Donating Businesses generate
substantial and continuing revenues for funding the common good
though thousands of charities and public initiatives.
2. By Transferring Political Power from the Rich to the
Public Good.
Important popular causes like ensuring everyone a living wage
and protecting our environment are under-funded because rich
individuals and corporations spend huge sums each year lobbying
our politicians to vote against these initiatives. As consumers
re-direct their purchasing power away from products sold by
these conventional corporations and toward products sold by
Profit-Donating Businesses, the rich earn less revenue to finance their lobbying. Meanwhile, PDC
initiatives serving the public good receive more and more
revenue to lobby our politicians for legislation that serves the
vast majority of people, and not the very rich.
3. By Empowering the Poor to Help Themselves.
When poor people throughout the world buy products, the rich
companies that sell those products become richer, while the
vast numbers of poor people often remain poor or become
relatively poorer. PDC empowers poor
populations worldwide to raise themselves out of poverty by buying
the products they buy from new business who donate their profits
to the cause of ending global
poverty.
FAQs
Principles
What is Profit-Donation Capitalism
(PDC)?
PDC is a new kind of free-market capitalism
that empowers us as consumers to direct profits from the products we buy to urgent,
under-funded causes and charities. Through PDC, profits
are channeled away from corporations, and in this way, PDC
transforms our free-market capitalist economy, and edefines how and why we consumers
buy our products.
PDC calls upon individuals and philanthropic public service organizations
to create a vast network of tens of thousands of Profit-Donating
Businesses that sell products, and
donate 100 percent of their profit to important causes. Successful
Profit-Donating Businesses like the ones listed
here already exist,
demonstrating the viability of this profit-donating business
model. As many tens of thousands
more of these Profit-Donating Businesses are created to compete
globally with
conventional businesses for the profits from our consumers dollars,
we will have built a virtually new free-market capitalist system
of, by and for the People rather than to make the very rich
richer. FAQs
How Does Profit-Donation Capitalism
Fund Important Causes?
We as shoppers choose the same-price, same-quality products sold
by Profit-Donating Businesses over those offered by conventional
companies so that 100 percent of the profit from what we buy can
fund the charities and causes we care about.
For example, a Profit-Donating Business called GeoDefender is
created in order to finance the fight against climate
change. It sells
breakfast cereals that are equal in price and quality
to the comparable breakfast cereals now sold by conventional businesses. At supermarkets,
a great many of us would opt to buy these GeoDefender breakfast
cereals over the other brands so that the profit
from our purchase
can be used to fight climate change. FAQs
Will Consumers Buy Products from
Profit-Donation Businesses?
To gauge how well Profit-Donating Business products would sell
at supermarkets, the author and two assistants 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 solid public support for the PDC
profit-donating
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 popular causes and charities can successfully
compete against any product
that can be matched in quality and price. When buying many of
the hundreds of thousands of these products in today's market, a
large percentage of shoppers would gladly choose Profit-Donating
Businesses' products over those of competitors in order to help
fund a wide variety of popular causes and charities. In this way
a fully implemented Profit-Donation Capitalism can channel tens
of billions of new dollars to serving the public good
each year. FAQs
What would We as Consumers Think about Profit-Donation
Capitalism?
We, a shoppers, would strongly value how Profit-Donation
Capitalism enhances our daily shopping routine by providing us
opportunities to fund important causes and charities through our
product purchases. We would
especially value the opportunity to support these causes at
no personal cost
by simply buying from Profit-Donating Business the products we would ordinarily buy
from conventional businesses,
while paying the same price
for same-quality products. FAQs
How Can Businesses that Give Away their
Profit Stay in Business?
Many successful businesses like those listed here now donate all
of their profit to causes and charities. For example, over the
last three and a half decades, Newman's Own, a Profit-Donating
Business established in 1982 by actor Paul Newman and author
Alex Hotchner, has donated over $500 million to thousands of
charities. During the last thirty-five years, Newman's Own has grown from
selling one product, salad dressing, to offering about fifty products. Not-For-Profit
organizations have also created Profit-Donating Business to
better fund their work. The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), earns $130 million
yearly just from selling greeting cards and the Girls Scouts
earn over $500 million yearly just from selling cookies . FAQs
Stages
How Can Profit-Donation Capitalism be
Established World-Wide?
Establishing PDC throughout the world as a more intelligent and
compassionate free-market capitalism will require organization and
collaboration. Stages in this process would include: 1) Concept Dissemination and Promotion, 2)
Organizational Leadership 3) Market Research, 4) Profit-Donating
Business 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 site is a first step in
introducing
PDC. The next step is for philanthropists,
not-for-profit organizations, social entrepreneurs, academics and journalists to
study and further refine the PDC
concept, and promote it to the global public. FAQs
2. Organizational Leadership
While Profit-Donation Capitalism can as the Profit-Donating
Businesses listed on this site demonstrate, develop and grow
naturally and independently, a centralized organizational leadership can more
quickly spearhead the establishment of
an extensive global network of thousands of these
Profit-Donating Businesses. This PDC leadership
will need to recruit talanted, visionary personnel, and obtain the
initial funding needed to
establish PDC throughout the world. FAQs
3. Market Research
So that financial institutions, not-for-profit organizations and
individual social entrepreneurs can confidently invest the capital needed to create
new Profit-Donating Businesses, market research will need
to answer questions such as:
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How strongly and
broadly do we as a global public support the concept and goals of Profit-Donation Capitalism?
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Which markets are best suited for introducing new
Profit-Donating
Business products? (Supermarkets, for
example, have many important advantages
over department and specialty stores.)
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Which
products are we consumers most willing to buy from
Profit-Donating
Businesses?
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Which specific causes are
we as consumers most willing to support through our purchases? FAQs
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How
Can Market Research Information be Inexpensively Acquired?
Profit-Donating Businesses have an advantage over competing
conventional businesses in acquiring market research
information. Because of their philanthropic purpose, and because their
selling point of donating all of their profit is a relatively
new concept within fields like economics, marketing,
advertising, and not-for-profit management, Profit-Donating
Businesses can arrange to have the research
conducted cost-free by the marketing departments of colleges and universities throughout the world.
Profit-Donating Businesses and academic institutions can establish "Research for
Donation" alliances. For example, a Profit-Donating
Business selling products
to fund childhood education may contract with a university’s
education department. The university's marketing department can
then conduct the Profit-Donating Businesses's market research in
exchange for some of the Profit-Donating Business's profit being
donated to the education center. Contractual collaborations
between Profit-Donating Businesses and universities can generate
an extensive body of product-specific market findings that would
cost millions of dollars if
conducted by professional marketing firms. FAQs
4. Profit-Donating Business Ownership Solicitation
Who Will Establish New Profit-Donating
Businesses?
After research demonstrates wide public support for
Profit-Donation Capitalism, philanthropists, social
entrepreneurs, not-for-profit
organizations and political groups can begin creating new
Profit-Donating Businesses. Philanthropists can create
Profit-Donating Businesses that would, over time, generate far more revenue for
their beneficiary causes than would one-time
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 Profit-Donating Businesses arms to generate
sales revenues. Politicians and celebrities are also ideal
candidates for establishing Profit-Donating Businesses. Owning a
Profit-Donating Business that funds a popular cause could prove
an important component of not-for-profit organizations' 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 competing Profit-Donating Businesses would
initially be somewhat necessary. To ensure
the greatest success of Profit-Donation Capitalism and of
individual Profit-Donating Businesses, however, extensive collaboration among existing and
prospective Profit-Donating Businesses is a wiser strategy. The media now covers new
Profit-Donating Businesses who periodically introduce new products. But if,
for example,
several dozen Profit-Donating Businesses 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
free publicity, the PDC organizational leadership should facilitate
Profit-Donating Business collaboration in ways that include the
following:
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A simultaneous introduction of as many new
Profit-Donating Businesses
selling new products to benefit one or more popular
causes and charities will attract the broadest media
coverage; an invaluable asset to all
Profit-Donating Businesses.
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Initially,
Profit-Donating Businesses
should refrain from competing in markets against
other Profit-Donating Businesses. Especially in
the early stages of PDC implementation, minimizing
such competition would ensure
the strongest success for all Profit-Donating
Businesses.
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Profit-Donating Businesses should be
assisted in sharing market research findings amongst
themselves. Naturally, this is best
accomplished when they are not competing against each other in
specific markets.
FAQs
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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 Profit-Donating
Businesses, and
orchestrate a simultaneous launching of
several dozen products.
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:
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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. |
These data shows how quickly
Newman's Own generated substantial profits, and how simple an
operation it was during those first years. A group of celebrities
could successfully market food products
using the Newman's Own model. To learn more about how Paul
Newman 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.
Imagine 20-40 celebrities selling food products to fund the
fight against climate change under an
international campaign. 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 would also be launching
the wider campaign that
would invite other celebrities, social entrepreneurs, philanthropists and
not-for-profit organizations to market their own profit-donating
products. Not-for-profit climate change
organizations would launch a sister campaign. This
kind of campaign would provide
the expanding network of profit-donating businesses free
world-wide publicity through websites and other venues. FAQs
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