Every time I see charities get swept up in one of those “vote us so we can win some money” contests, I am mildly disheartened. Oh, I’m always hopeful that someone has vetted the non-profits so that no one’s voting for a moi charity. Still, the winner will not necessarily be the worthiest charity on the list – just the one who can get out the vote. Which is okay, as long as they do it on the up and up.
Still, it makes me wistful for the good old days, when corporations that were going to make donations to good causes did so behind closed doors. So we never got to see the way in which they decided who gets the grant. Organizational merit is, of course, in the eye of the beholder. I may roll my eyes at an outfit that teaches cats to play the xylophone, but the cat xylophone fans may roll their eyes at my charities of choice. No doubt grant awarding has always been some part capricious, some part arbitrary, some part who you know, some part ‘this is of interest’, and some part ‘this one really does good.’
Now, of course, many corporations want to get a bit more bang than a press release and a mention in the annual fund raising dinner program for their philanthropic buck.
Enter the contest, in which non-profits have to do all sorts of attention getting and general meshugas in order to beat out the other guys and walk off with that philanthropic buck.
In some respects, this is a win-win: the corporation gets its name and logo in front of a lot of people, and some charities get the dough.
But, of course, where there’s online voting in this age of spam, there’s bound to be manipulation. And the latest fund-raising contest getting heat for voter fraud is Pepsi.
Pepsi Refresh, the online fund-raising contest with a $20 million giveaway for charitable causes and nonprofit groups, is again receiving complaints that its results are being manipulated. (Source: NY Times.)
I took a quick look through Pepsi Refresh, and most of the organizations I saw were decidedly not of the Metropolitan Opera, Boys & Girls Clubs, American Cancer Society variety.
It’s folks looking to spay cats, improve the health of our honeybee population, start using recyclable lunch trays, help fund the Luther Michigan library, spruce up a Girl Scout Camp in South Carolina. Local, particular, personal… As in send the Green Lake, Wisconsin marching band to the Fourth of July Parade in Washington.
Many of the groups are those for which a boost of $5K would be a very big deal. And winning online probably seems a lot cooler, and with less heavy lifting, than a car wash or lollipop day in front of the local supermarket. (With Pepsi Refresh, organizations can vie for $5K, $25K, $50K, or $250K awards.)
I’m sure that a lot of them just put their ideas out there to see what happens. And that many others have done a tremendous amount of work getting out the vote legitimately. Which means no proxy voting, no voting from international locations.
“I feel like we were cheated out of a win,” said Ann Goody, a founder of the Three Ring Ranch, an exotic-animal sanctuary in Kona, Hawaii, that participated in the contest for many months. “We worked our hearts out with e-mails, phone calls, Facebook, kids handing out candy canes at Wal-Mart and then we find out our win was stolen from us by people breaking the rules.”
Ms. Goody was narrowly beaten out by a late surge by Guardian Angel Feline Rescue. She is one of several animal shelter entrants who believe that voting irregularities were what nabbed that $50K win for Guardian.
Cat-fight! (Hell hath no fury like an animal shelter scorned in this dog eat dog world.)
Pepsi says that it’s taking all fraud allegations seriously, and that it hasn’t smelled a rat yet.
Still, there is the claim that, with Guardian Angel, a “third party service was used to generate proxy votes from abroad.”
Claimants believe that someone named “Mr. Magic” was at work.
Mr. Magic is an go-getter from India who offers to goose vote totals for a fee, or a percentage of the winnings.
“Someone sent us an e-mail …a couple of months ago, asking us if we wanted this service,” said Jeff Hynes, the founder of Cash for Critters, a nonprofit group in Euclid, Ohio, that won $25,000 in the contest last month. “I think we just deleted it because we didn’t want anything to do with that. We tried to do this the way it’s supposed to be done.”
But Ms. Goody thinks she has the smoking gun on Guardian Angel: an e-mail in which its director appears to be complaining about the difficulty of getting her payment to Mr. Magic.
I hope that Pepsi can clear the air here.
Meanwhile, the polls are open.
I almost voted for a rescue outfit that specializes in Labrador retrievers, but even a puppy as cute as my dog-nephew Jack can’t get me to surrender my e-mail address and date of birth to Pepsi.
Still, it is interesting to see how what the new Pepsi generation’s up to.
Forget the pompom shaking cheerleaders and smooth guys in madras shirts who made up the first Pepsi generation.
These days, it’s Mr. Magic, spamming from India.
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