A Peace and Justice Tax for the Holidays

/24-7PressRelease.com/ - Imagine that every holiday present this season will generate a sales tax to fund peace and justice organizations. Call it a PJT. Now, imagine that this PJT will cost consumers nothing, that it will be paid exclusively by big retailers. Hard to imagine? Not for the two web sites Working Assets" ShopForChange and HEARTof.com. They"re not only imagining a PJT, they"re levying it.

Here"s how they do it: Both sites feature shopping malls that sell nothing of their own, but rather link to big online retailers. Click on the Barnes and Noble link at either ShopForChange or HEARTof.com, for example, and you cybertrip over to the regular BN.com site, with the same prices and products as usual. Make a purchase, and Barnes and Noble pays ShopForChange or HEARTof.com a referral fee, or in other words, a tax on that sale. ShopForChange or HEARTof.com then turn this sales tax into a PJT by donating a portion of it to a peace and justice organization.

Despite these similarities, ShopForChange and HEARTof.com differ dramatically. The latter pays organizations bigger PJTs, offers shoppers many more stores, and allows shoppers themselves to choose the organizations that will receive the PJT generated by their purchases.
First, the two sites pay out different PJTs. Both sites explain this to shoppers in terms of percentages of purchase prices. In these terms, ShopForChange pays from 3 up to 5% of purchase prices and averages about 4.3%. HEARTof.com, whose website boasts the "Web"s Biggest Donations," donates from .5% on certain computers up to 40% on certain magazines and averages over 7.2%. In terms of shares of the PJT, ShopForChange keeps about 50% and donates about 50%; HEARTof.com keeps less than 25% and donates more than 75%.

Second, the two sites" malls are different sizes. ShopForChange is a mini-mall with only nine stores. HEARTof.com currently has over 325 stores.

Third, the two sites explain that they use different criteria to determine whether a peace and justice group is eligible for PJT payments.

Revenues generated by ShopForChange flow to Working Assets, and the latter funds only 50 peace and justice groups in any year, and only groups that are national or international in scope and that work on "peace & International Freedom, Civil Rights, Economic & Social justice, Environment, and Education and Freedom of Expression." Working Assets will not donate to groups that raise awareness of or research a particular disease, or that are tied to a specific religion or denomination.

HEARTof.com will donate to any number of national or international peace and justice groups, but also any number of regional or local groups, regardless of whether they are religiously affiliated or not. HEARTof.com will help groups that "promote peace, justice, or human, animal, or environmental betterment, broadly defined" and that do not act out or advocate "violence or disrespect toward people, animals or the environment."

Lastly, the two sites allow shoppers different levels of power in choosing which peace and justice groups actually receive the PJT created by their purchases.

Registered shoppers at ShopForChange, like other Working Assets" members, are allowed to nominate groups and to vote on the relative share of available donations that go to the groups that get chosen. But Working Assets" Board of Directors and employees actually decide which groups receive contributions from the combined revenue streams of Working Assets" online shopping, credit card, long-distance telephone and other businesses.

By contrast, at HEARTof.com each shopper signs up to have his or her shopping help whatever peace and justice group he or she chooses. "Big capital, especially its more politically progressive sectors, have long bragged about their dedication to consumer sovereignty or empowerment," says founder and HEARTof.com CEO, Frank Fitzgerald, "but we practice it."

So which of these sites should interested peace and justice groups encourage their supporters to use? It depends.

If an organization fits Working Assets" qualifications and has some reason to believe that Working Assets" board members and employees will choose it as one of the 50 groups they fund each year, it probably would want to go with ShopForChange.

But any national or international organization that has no such belief, as well as regional, local, or religiously affiliated groups, will want to go with HEARTof.com. So long as they have even one supporter shopping online through HEARTof.com, such peace and justice groups are assured of receiving their share of HEARTof.com"s PJT.

And in the current world, of course, this is virtually the only way that most peace and justice groups can get a share of a PJT.

Source: on pressbot.org | Date: 14.12.2005 - 21:50 | 262 times read