Charities Upset Over Chase Facebook Contest 464
ssv03 writes "The New York Times is reporting that Chase Community Giving of Chase Bank recently held a contest on Facebook in which users were encouraged to vote for their favorite charities. At the end of the contest, the 100 charities with the most votes would win $25,000 and advance to the next round to have a chance to win $1 million. Initially, the vote counts for each organization were made public, but two days before voting ended they were hidden, and the final totals have still not been released. While Chase had no official leader board during the voting, several organizations were keeping track of projected winners. Those projections were almost identical to the final results, yet several organizations including Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP), Marijuana Policy Project and several anti-abortion groups were not finalists. They had been performing very well (some within the top 20) until the vote counters were removed. Chase Bank has so far refused to discuss the issue with the organizations. SSDP has spoken out in a press release (PDF) and is calling for a boycott."
Re:Nothing outrageous... (Score:4, Informative)
Chase’s eligibility rules make it clear that the bank can disqualify any participant.
Pretty straightfoward really, no lawyer techno-bable there.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Charities? (Score:5, Informative)
It's simpler to refer to 501c as a tax status and leave the charity part off.
Re:Marketing, not charity (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Charities? (Score:2, Informative)
SSDP is about repealing the law passed by an anti-drug crusading republican which denied student loans to anyone with a marijuana defense. Because of course taking people's education away is certainly going to lead them on the rigth path in life. That's sarcasm, in case you couldn't comprehend it.
Re:Charities? (Score:5, Informative)
Amex did it better... (Score:5, Informative)
American Express (AmEx) did something similar in the Boston area. However, they thought it through first. An organization that wanted to participate had to submit a proposal on what they would do with the money and description of the organization's misson. AmEx selected about 40 (all worthwhile) organizations to vote on. AmEx got a reasonable selection of charities to participate--some of the really large ones, and a few highly specialized. The organizations used their participation to encourage their members to vote and become engaged to the organiztion goals.
I think every organization that was selected got some funding (perhaps at the $1000 level) so there weren't hard feeling from the losers.
Goes to show you that Chase != American Express.
Re:Non-embarassing charities (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Charities? (Score:3, Informative)
If drugs were legalized, it would do a hell of a lot more good for poor communities than any sort of handout.
On the other hand, if abortion were criminalized, many more women would die and the crime rate would spike 15 years later.
Re:Charities? (Score:3, Informative)
As I see it, they made the current votes public. As any fule kno, if you don't want to bias your election/survey/popularity contest you don't publish the votes as they come in since that will either encourage the losing parties to have to rally their troops or lose heart and give up, or cause the winning parties to get over-confident. Sure, these effects may cancel each other out but it's no longer a simple question of how do the people who can be bothered to think independently want to vote.
See that last slashdot poll that asked 'How do you choose your answer to the slashdot poll?' when the most popular option was 'vote for the current leader'. Or something like that. Someome find the URL...
Re:Pro-"Choice" (Score:3, Informative)
As a long time progressive pro-lifer I must say that the type of groups you are talking about to my knowledge have not existed since the 80's. Most pro-life groups I know of that do outreach have people that help with getting a job, getting into school and very often helping with childcare. The last one I volunteered at even had a licensed therapist come in that treated issues like having an abortion, domestic violence and post-partum depression. Show me a Planned Parenthood that does counseling for grief after the abortion, it seems PP is more of the cut and run type when it comes to this issue.
I'm a member of CFI and not bound by any theology, so your blanket statement doesn't apply to me or most of the people I know who work at pro-life groups like Democrats for Life, PLAGAL and other progressive groups or even volunteers at centers that are sponsored by religious organizations.
Re:Charities? (Score:3, Informative)
That's the trouble with all anti-abortion groups: they only care about babies being born, after wards, the mother is on her own - even if it means they starve and are homeless. And many of them have the audacity to call themselves Christian.
Your ignorance of the anti-abortion movement is hilarious. My parents/family have (for 20+ years, now) been very involved in supporting multiple organizations in SoCal whose primary concern is taking care of single mothers who choose not to have an abortion - providing a home for them (often for the first couple years), while also helping them find a job, including providing professional skills training and support for taking college courses, as well as paying for food, baby needs, medical expenses, etc. Here's a link to one of them [hisnestingplace.org]. The website quality is kinda crappy because they spend all monetary donations on supporting the women. But don't let a google search of "home for unwed mothers", or "home for single mothers", get in the way of your hate.
Re:Marketing, not charity (Score:3, Informative)
501(c)(3) defined by the IRS (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Charities? (Score:3, Informative)
But coming back to the original point, is that a charity? Just from reading the summary, it seems like all the groups that were removed were activist groups endorsing a specific change in laws.
Most activist groups still on the list do.
Its one thing to ask Chase to endorse the charity of your choice, its another to ask them to make a political donation to support your pet cause.
They put it up for a vote. When they didn't like the results, they excluded certain organizations and refused to give a reason. That's what people are upset about and I don't blame the organizations excluded for promoting a boycott.
Re:Pro-"Choice" (Score:3, Informative)
Merry Christmas Everyone!
Abortion is a very emotional issue.
May I please suggest that we all keep the peace!
We all must treat each other with love and respect.
Luv you all!
Re:Pro-"Choice" (Score:2, Informative)
Hey, this makes total sense except for the fact that THE ONLY THING THE ANALOGY INTRODUCED WAS THAT THE BABY IS NO LONGER HUMAN. Well fucking done there champ, that's excellent.
Correct, he was exactly right.
So you're walking down the street when you see a HUGE ALIEN. You stab it to death hurriedly. And these self-righteous bastards want to try you for murder!
Right. If you arbitrarily stab a sentient being, human or alien, that's murder.
If you dispose of non-sentient tissue in your body, a human or alien tumor, that is a complete non-issue.
If you dispose of post-sentient tissue in your body, a brain dead human or alien, that is a complete non-issue.
If you dispose of pre-sentient tissue in your body, an early undeveloped human or alien fetus, that is a complete non-issue.
If you have a sentient adult human grafted on to your body, or a sentient adult alien grafted on to your body, or a well developed neo-sentient late term fetus grafted on to your body, then it is an issue. And the issue is that that you should try to preserve the life of both, but if the host is unwilling then you separate them if viable try to keep them both alive.
If an adult sentient human is attached to my body for life support, then it is my choice whether to offer continued assistance or not. I have the right to control my body and sever that connection if I choose, and to leave that other adult human to survive (or not) on their own. If *I* am somehow surgically grafted to an alien for life support, then I would hope the alien would be willing to go to significant lengths to help me survive, but that alien has the right to cut me off of it's body and leave me to live or die on my own.
And again as I said, it is a complete non-issue when it comes to non-sentient tissue, or pre-sentient tissue, or post-sentient tissue.
If someone's brain has been blown off by heavy artillery and the body is being sustained on life support machines, that is an empty body. It may be "human tissue", but there is no mind there, no person there. The exact same logic applies at the both ends of life. An early undeveloped human fetus may be "human tissue", but there is no mind there, no person there.
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Hold on (Score:5, Informative)
At issue here is their social agenda, not their efficient use of bailout monies.
This is highly reminiscent of when Obama asked for input from Americans for issues they wanted to see addressed; the very highest rated issue was legalization of marijuana and amnesty for those imprisoned or otherwise punished.
So what happened? When the time came to address the issues, Obama laughed it off, literally laughing about it in public, during the program for talking about these issues, and acting like it was "crazy talk."
The people running this country - and you'd better believe that includes the people running the banks and other major players in the financial system, such as the insurance companies - are completely out of touch.
Regulation drops prices and usage (Score:3, Informative)
Read about what happened in Portugal.
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1893946,00.html [time.com]
The paper, published by Cato in April, found that in the five years after personal possession was decriminalized, illegal drug use among teens in Portugal declined and rates of new HIV infections caused by sharing of dirty needles dropped, while the number of people seeking treatment for drug addiction more than doubled.
"Judging by every metric, decriminalization in Portugal has been a resounding success," says Glenn Greenwald, an attorney, author and fluent Portuguese speaker, who conducted the research. "It has enabled the Portuguese government to manage and control the drug problem far better than virtually every other Western country does."
Re:It's sad to think someone modded this troll (Score:3, Informative)
My education involved no student loans. I suspect there is a significant amount of the audience that is in the same boat.
If by 'significant amount' you mean '1/3', then sure.
2/3rds of college graduates have student loans.
But, incidentally, that's incorrect for the point you're trying to make.
The drug laws bar all federal aids, not just loans, but grants also.
Almost every college student has Federal grants. Just the Pell grant alone went to about 7,000,000 people in 2009, which is half of all college students...and that's just one of the many out there.
If you got through college without any Federal aid at all, you either did it before 1980 or so, or you're fairly wealthy. I suspect the actual answer is : You've forgotten or did not know about the aid you were getting.
Re:Charities? (Score:5, Informative)
If that's Chase's policy, they should just explain that and be consistent about it, and far fewer people would be complaining.
Chase did explain their policy, both upfront and after these groups started whining. They simply weren't eligible in the first place and got culled out after the first round of voting. Wikipedia describes SSDP as a "non-profit advocacy group", which is not the same thing as a charity. Below are some relevant quotes from the articles.
Chase opened its contest to any charity whose operating budget was less than $10 million and whose mission “aligned” with the bank’s corporate social responsibility guidelines.
"Chase’s eligibility rules make it clear that the bank can disqualify any participant."
Mr. Evangelisti said the 100 finalists “reflect those organizations that received the most votes among eligible participants.”
Re:Charities? (Score:3, Informative)
Alcohol is in fact the only drug that I know of that has withdrawal symptoms that include death. If you are a severe alcoholic, you should not go cold turkey. From about.com [about.com]:
However, within six to 48 hours after not drinking, hallucinations may develop. These usually are visual hallucinations but they can also involve sounds and smells. They can last for a few hours up to weeks at a time.
Also within this time frame after quitting, convulsions or seizures can occur, which is the point at which alcohol withdrawal can become dangerous, if not medically treated. The symptoms may progress to delirium tremens (DT's) after three to five days without alcohol. The symptoms of DT's include profound confusion, disorientation, hallucinations, hyperactivity, and extreme cardiovascular disturbances.
Once DT's begin, there is no known medical treatment to stop them. Grand mal seizures, heart attacks and stroke can occur during the DT's, all of which can be fatal.
Re:Medical use (Score:5, Informative)
I'm a member of SSDP. I'm also a member of Amnesty International - and I've been with AI much longer, and am much more involved with them - I've worked with the regional office in D.C. on a couple campaigns even. But I don't think it is at all fair to say that Amnesty's cases are any more important than those of groups like SSDP. And even if you think they are, in this specific case Amnesty wasn't one of the organizations SSDP was competing against. Neither was the Red Cross. Or Doctors without Borders. The organizations that _won_ this contest included things like the "Stella Adler Studio Of Acting". Now, I'm not going to get into what organizations are more worthy of the money, but seriously, if it's worth giving to art education programs then surely it can be worth giving to drug education programs as well.
Now, as for SSDP and similar organizations not being worthy in general - it sounds like you are thinking we are NORML or other legalization organizations. We aren't. We are not a "weed pushing organization", we are a drug policy reform organization. Look at cases like University of Michigan student Derek Copp - he was shot, through his lungs and liver by a police officer over what was later described as "a few tablespoons" of marijuana. A _misdemeanor_ offense in the state of Michigan. He nearly died over it. Look at our prisons - how many hundreds of thosands of people are in prison for no reason other than minor drug offenses? These are not violent people, these are people whose crimes are far less severe than those that Amnesty tries to free. I mean honestly, Amnestly works to help people proven guilty of murder in some cases. So what, we should try to save those people, but if your crime is just smoking a joint, you deserve to rot in prison forever for it? SSDP fights to restore financial aid to students convicted of drug offenses. I have a friend, who's extremely intelligent but from a very poor family. He had financial aid covering his entire college expense. And he got caught once smoking weed. Now he's working at McDonald's trying to save up enough money to go back. SSDP works to help people like him. SSDP works to promote _real_ drug education - the amount of people addicted to illegal drugs hasn't changed at all in nearly a hundred years - yet in just a decade, through _education_ not incarceration, we managed to cut the number of people addicted to nicotine (one of the most addictive substances we know of) in half!
So tell me this - why is saving lives lost to drugs not worth anything? Why is providing a good education to good kids not worth anything? Why is keeping nonviolent offenders out of prison not a worthy cause? I mean ok, I can accept you ranking the red cross up there higher than groups like SSDP - I mean they're purely about saving lives. But things like Amnesty International - they are only different from SSDP because of their size. They're both extremely political organizations trying to save the lives and freedoms of people who _they_ feel haven't done anything wrong.
Re:Charities? (Score:3, Informative)
No, it can't. You might wish you were dead, but there are no cases of heroin withdrawal killing anyone.
Re:Charities? (Score:3, Informative)
(NSFW Image)
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/12/2009_in_photos_part_3_of_3.html#photo37 [boston.com]
A man was stoned to death just this year.