Quote:
Originally Posted by gmw
I find the whole thing a bit dodgy. Chances are the charity these books go to know what these children would benefit from most. So give them them the money directly, along with the chance to buy books without no markup.
Of course charity isn't quite that simple. For whatever reason, people may be more inclined to give if they think they are giving a specific gift. The possibly better PR of giving books may make the company more generous.
There's a whole social sciences problem sitting here waiting to be studied.
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But it appears that the charities aren't being given books, the person who pays the $5 is. I suppose, if the books given to the 'donator' are worth considerably less that $5, the the remainder of the money is what the charity gets; either that or B&N just pocket the money, in which case I don't see how this benefits a charity at all.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding this because it's a particularly US form of charity. In the UK it would be more likely for a bookshop, or supermarket to have a bin with a sign over it asking for books to be donated to a particular children's charity in order to give them a book for Christmas, or something similar. Many supermarkets have such bins for tins of cat/dog food for donation to Cat's Protection or RSPCA etc. You just do your normal shopping, but buy a few extra cans to put in the donation bins.