Hannah: Folly, Revisited

One of Ma's favorite blog themes is human folly. I am delighted to be able to point out an example of folly in the non-profit world:

The Gap's "Red" campaign.

According to this article, $100 million in advertising has been spent putting up posters of Christy Turlington doing yoga in a red t-shirt, and other famous people doing other stuff in red t-shirts. The idea being that if you bought a red t-shirt, some of the money would go to a particular charitable fund.

The $100M expenditure has resulted in $18M being raised for charity. (The participating companies pocket half the profit). Oops.

As the website www.BuyLessCrap.org points out, you could give the money directly to the non-profits and everyone would be better off. Oh wait, except Gap.