The Season of Giving

Commercials at Christmastime are very troubling. They make us overspend and/or feel inadequate. You haven’t bought your wife that Christmas Lexus? You haven’t picked up that Cadillac your husband’s been eyeing? Only two days left to pick up that monster T.V. or buy your teenagers the cell phone of their dreams!
Worse than these however, are the commercials that make us believe that we are doing something that we are not. You’ve seen the commercial in which people are happily prancing through a door with little 5% bull’s-eyes floating over their heads. It’s a Target commercial, and in it they tell us that 5% of their net profits are given back to the community. It makes you feel good about shopping there. You can think “5% is going back to my community”, as you pay at the check-out. But be warned, net profit is what is left after a company pays out all of its expenses. Not 5% of what you’ve spent, but 5% of the profit that they made from that sale. For my purposes I’m going to call this contributing off the bottom. Giving from what’s left over.
Most of the business owners I know here contribute money off the top. They may or may not decide to contribute to your particular cause, but they don’t go to their accountant to find out what’s left over that they can give. They give without considering the bottom line. I got curious. I e-mailed Target asking how much they have given back to Blue Island. This is the response that I received “I'm sorry for any disappointment, but we don't distribute a list of organizations who receive Target grants.” So I started calling around various organizations in town, trying to find out if any of them had received grants. I did find one. Then, oddly enough, I was at Target the other day, and they have a list of grant recipients posted by the bathrooms. According to that list they have contributed a little over $1000.00 to educational facilities in our city. However, they did not list the one place that I talked to. Giving Target the benefit of the doubt, (they might have contributed to other places they did not list at the store) I’m going to say that they have contributed maybe $3000.00 to Blue Island. I think our business is fairly typical. We have contributed to School Districts 130 and 218, the Fourth of July fireworks, the Blue Island Park District, the Blue Island Library, Blue Cap, the Blue Island Historical Society, Main Street Blue Island, St. Francis Hospital, the Blue Island Chamber of Commerce, and Neighborhood Watch Group #37. The amount donated will be over $1000.00 by the end of the year, one third of what Target may have donated and that does not include the tickets for spaghetti suppers, pancake breakfasts, raffles, Girl Scout cookies, and school fund raisers. What does this mean to you? The percentage of your money that is given back to the community is far greater when you shop your local businesses. So next time you spend $5.00 in a neighborhood store, you can think “I’m contributing to my community” and it will be a lot more than a percentage of somebody’s net profit. On top of that, 1% of your purchase is given back to Blue Island in the form of sales tax. Let me ask you this: Where do you spend your money, and is it truly helping your community? Candace Carr CARR home-garden-holiday
P.S. In 2008, we are allowing our customers to determine where we invest our donations in the community. When you shop with us, please let us know which organization you would like us to support.