Devil’s Advocate in support of certain CVS-style recoup-our-commitment donations:
Suppose that all the following are true:
CVS giving to charity in some form is reasonable, and a classic donation-matching drive would have been one reasonable method
CVS internal predictions suggest that a matching drive would generate ~$5m of customer donations, which they’d then have to match with ~$5m of their own
A donation of exactly $10m is more useful to the recipient than the uncertainty of a donation drive with EV $10m, because the recipient can confidently budget around the fixed amount
In this case, instead of running the drive and donating ~$10m at the end, it seems pretty reasonable to donate $10m up front and then ask for customer donations afterward? And while a CDT agent might now refuse to donate because the donation goes to CVS and not to the charity, an LDT agent who would have donated to the matching drive should still donate to this new version because their being-and-having-been the kind of agent who would do that is what caused CVS to switch to this more useful fixed-size version.
(Though even if you buy the above, it would still behoove the retailer to be transparent about what they’re doing; that plus the “retailers take a massive cut” argument seems like pretty good reasons to avoid donating through retailers anyway.)
Devil’s Advocate in support of certain CVS-style recoup-our-commitment donations:
Suppose that all the following are true:
CVS giving to charity in some form is reasonable, and a classic donation-matching drive would have been one reasonable method
CVS internal predictions suggest that a matching drive would generate ~$5m of customer donations, which they’d then have to match with ~$5m of their own
A donation of exactly $10m is more useful to the recipient than the uncertainty of a donation drive with EV $10m, because the recipient can confidently budget around the fixed amount
In this case, instead of running the drive and donating ~$10m at the end, it seems pretty reasonable to donate $10m up front and then ask for customer donations afterward? And while a CDT agent might now refuse to donate because the donation goes to CVS and not to the charity, an LDT agent who would have donated to the matching drive should still donate to this new version because their being-and-having-been the kind of agent who would do that is what caused CVS to switch to this more useful fixed-size version.
(Though even if you buy the above, it would still behoove the retailer to be transparent about what they’re doing; that plus the “retailers take a massive cut” argument seems like pretty good reasons to avoid donating through retailers anyway.)