More on Magnets

Further to the rant about magnetic yellow ribbons, I received the following message from Micah at Magnet America:

Hi,
Saw your blog about Magnet America. We gave more than 50% of our profits to bonafide charitable causes (Freedom Calls, Autism Awareness, Relay for Life, and many more) in 2004. Based upon your passion, I am assuming you would want the truth.

I don’t agree with your conclusions, but it makes for interesting reading. We don’t have to all agree to get along. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, “It takes all sorts to make a world.”

Regards, Micah

Fair play to them; its nice at least to see a modern company prepared to defend its corner with anything other than stony silence. Therefore I'm going to get in touch with Micah and see if he can give me more details and walk me through the math (I'm still hung up on a $45,000 donation off a million magnets sold not being 50% of profit, unless they have a spectacularly inefficient production and distribution system. I'm sure Micah will endeavor to explain to a thickie like me). I shall report the results later.

As Micah notes, its a good thing that we don't all agree, and so I'll state again, simple logic dictates that it is better for you to make a 100% donation to a charity for the price of the item you were going to buy that gives 50% of net profits.

Once again, if you buy something you are ensuring that less money than you are capable of giving is going to the cause you care about. The same goes for AIDS ribbons and Lance Armstrong bracelets too, by the way. All you are saying is "I need to be bribed with a trinket to do good."