It's all the rage across the U.S. these days. Public radio stations are fundraising using this tempting device. If you act now, you can double the value of your pledge - all because some philanthropic business has offered to give a tax-deductible amount to the station if, and only if, the station can convince you to give money. So, your pledge is effectively doubled! What a great deal!!! And it would be, if it were true.
Whatever happened to truth in advertising? Why can't we tell people the truth and accept their decision even when it doesn't serve us in our immediate need? Instead, we have come to expect a certain amount deceit as usual and customary. We don't expect flat out lying, but we do expect that the other guy will "set the stage in his favor." He is not really allowed to tell an untruth, but he is allowed to leave part of the truth out. It's like a little game: he tells you what you want to hear, and you are left to figure out if something is missing.
Of course, you're not obligated to figure anything out. You can accept your position as the generous one who was lucky enough to double the value of your donation by being at the right place at the right time. But eventually you have to ask yourself, "do any of the generous donors of the dollar-for-dollar matching grants ever ask for their money back?" In the event that no one accepts the challenge, does the company take its tax-deductible money back and put it somewhere else? Does that make sense? It usually isn't worth more if its donated somewhere else unless there is some special tax benefit. If that were the case, why wasn't the money put there in the first place?
One might think, as suggested by the radio station, that if the grant is not matched, it must be returned to the donor. By the letter of the law that is true. The money need not actually be returned, however, only offered to be returned. Let's consider what happens if it is returned: the station loses the money, and the donor loses its tax deduction. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to recognize that as a lose-lose proposition. But...if the station only has to make the offer to return the challenge grant money, and the donor refuses by saying, "oh, just go ahead a keep the money anyway," everything is legal and the ruse continues.
The station announcers are very careful to say that "if the matching grant is not met, we will have to offer to give the money back." It would be interesting to see the real statistics on just how much is actually returned to the donors, and permanently lost to the station. It could well be that the money is sent back to the donor, only to be returned to the radio station as a straight donation without the requirement of a matching money from listeners. That would be really legal but would still be an exploitation of the listeners who believed that their pledges were actually necessary for the station to get the donor dollars.
It would seem that if this were a substantial problem, that is, that the money is truly lost, the announcers would talk about how much they really did lose in the last drive by not meeting the challenges. Only occasionally do they mention that they didn't meet the dollar-for-dollar challenge at an earlier pledge break. They never tell you that the money was offered again at another pledge break where the challenge was then met. They leave you to follow your assumptions about what happened to the money. Net, net, net...the station may have lost nothing.
One could argue that even if this dollar-for-dollar challenge is a little manipulative, it is for a good cause. The money is going for a legitimate community service. After all, they are following the letter of the law. But we encourage our children to follow the spirit of the law, not merely the letter of the law. We encourage them to do the right thing even if they don't benefit. Ideally, the letter of the law attempts to spell out what is really intended. Words are often inadequate when it comes to expressing the full intention. Consequently, we are left to fill in the gaps with our honor - to do the right thing. In the case of the dollar-for-dollar challenge, the spirit of the law seems to say that if we tell someone we need their contribution in order to get a matching grant, that should really be the case. It should mean that if we don't get the individual contributions to match the challenge, then we shouldn't get the grant, and will actually lose the money.The station announcers are very careful to say that "if the matching grant is not met, we will have to offer to give the money back." It would be interesting to see the real statistics on just how much is actually returned to the donors, and permanently lost to the station. It could well be that the money is sent back to the donor, only to be returned to the radio station as a straight donation without the requirement of a matching money from listeners. That would be really legal but would still be an exploitation of the listeners who believed that their pledges were actually necessary for the station to get the donor dollars.
It would seem that if this were a substantial problem, that is, that the money is truly lost, the announcers would talk about how much they really did lose in the last drive by not meeting the challenges. Only occasionally do they mention that they didn't meet the dollar-for-dollar challenge at an earlier pledge break. They never tell you that the money was offered again at another pledge break where the challenge was then met. They leave you to follow your assumptions about what happened to the money. Net, net, net...the station may have lost nothing.
So, we're back to the question about truth in advertising. What kind of relationships do we build through this process? It's one thing to offer donated gifts as inducements to individual donors. It is quite another to lead those same donors to believe that their donations are somehow worth more through some matching grant, when the value of the grant would eventually end up at the station anyway. It is like me telling you that if you will send me $10, I will match that with $10 from my pocket. You will then have effectively given me $20. How generous you are!
