Area Man's Starbucks Purchase Finally Ends African AIDS Epidemic

by Jeff Raderstrong at the blog Change Charity:

After deciding to add a bag of (Starbucks) RED brand coffee on top of his vente mocha latte order, area man Bill West completed the final piece of the puzzle to end the AIDS epidemic in Africa...

"This is a great day for humanity," said Michel Kazatchkine, Executive Director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, where Starbucks made the $1 donation--taken from West's purchase--needed to rid the continent of the disease that had crippled it for decades. "All of our work, all of our time, all of our hopes are now validated by this one last push to end AIDS in Africa."

...Bono, humanitarian activist and U2 front-man, reached out to the broader global community to recognize the efforts of the people that made it possible.

"It is important to remember what went into this momentous occasion," said the rock star, one of the founders of the Product RED brand. "The Product RED line successfully mobilized Western consumers to go out and buy things they either already had or only moderately desired under the guise of social responsibility. With out these compassionate consumers, or the compassionate Starbucks marketing directors who decided to give up razor-thin amounts of their profit margin to the Global Fund in exchange for the Product Red partnership, this debilitating disease would still be destroying Africa."

It’s a love fest!

Starbucks, in partnership with RED, recently announced a plan to have musicians in 156 countries participate in a Global Sing-along, which produced this totally adorable video:

What does this have to do with the price of (coffee) beans? The All-You-Need-is-Love fest is part of a giant global plan to save the continent of Africa from dying of AIDS (and also maybe sell some coffee and reap the marketing benefits of associating their brand with the compassionate, virtuous, saving Africa image).

If you spend $15 at Starbucks, they’ll give you a CD with above song on it (supplies limited!), and donate a dollar to the Global Fund.  It gets more convoluted from there: Go online to the Starbucks love website and draw a cutesy love card to trigger another donation from Starbucks to the Global Fund, this time of 5 cents. Finally, if you upload a video facing your computer camera and singing goofily along to the Beatles classic, Starbucks will toss the GF another nickel.

It's almost enough to make you forget that if you bypassed Starbucks all together and just donated your $15 bucks to the Global Fund you’d be helping…15 times more.

Product (RED): from ridicule to dialogue

This blog has ridiculed the RED campaign from all possible angles. We’ve questioned whether creating a few pennies of aid through buying a corporate product is worth all the hype, criticized the murky finances of the legal entity behind RED, and gone after RED co-founder Bono with jibes, fake awards and parodies. Displaying exceptional cool in the face of this mockery, Bobby Shriver, the other co-founder of RED, met me for a coffee. He could have gone all angry and defensive and preachy about His Great Initiative (which others in his place have done). Instead, he asked for suggestions on how to improve RED.

In response to my suggestion that RED source more products from Africa, he pointed to the “From Africa To Africa” coffee from Starbucks and said they had apparently not done enough to advertise they were already doing that. He also said he was open to discussing it more. I think RED marketing to support self-help by African entrepreneurs to sell in the US would be brilliant. (I have to report that the RED coffee I tried was OK, but nowhere near the Tomoca Coffee I purchased in Ethiopia – the best coffee I have ever had but difficult to buy outside Ethiopia.)

I too tried to be open-minded. He understands the politics of advocacy much better than I do: “You’ve got to get them talking about the cause at the Pig Roast” (the typical fund-raising event for a congressional candidate). Let’s give Shriver and RED credit for raising awareness of AIDS in Africa, not to mention of African poverty in general (although I’m sticking to my argument that the Bono/RED approach has led to some paternalistic and misguided remedies to those problems.)

Is ridicule a good way to promote dialogue? I don’t know. I don’t believe in “why can’t we all just get along” rather than debate. There are already plenty of people using aid-establishment-speak to talk politely around the issues—blunt critiques and satire can be useful to break that spell. Shriver also deserves credit for hearing the criticism and still being willing to engage in dialogue. I am wondering if sometimes I should look harder for dialogue before the satire starts.

Having fixed Africa and AIDS, Bono tackles filesharing (from BoingBoing)

Bono, in a New York Times top-ten essay filled with of Brilliant Ideas That Will Fix The World If Only They'd Listen To Moi, says "Intellectual Property Developers" are doomed because of filesharing...

From a post on the great blog BoingBoing.

I know the NYT is desperate to survive, but having Bono as a regular columnist is...OK, I give up. How about Lady Gaga writing on counter-terrorism?

Sarah Dadush addresses RED’s response to her paper

Sarah Dadush sent us this response to our Cui Bono? Post. It's gratifying that Red is willing to shed light on some of the transparency issues raised by my paper. This openness could help Red set a standard for other initiatives that resemble it. The Red model now creates many informational gaps, which extend far beyond the question of whether Bono and Shriver are making money from it.

It's not about whether to "do the (Red) thing" but about how to do it. We want to know more about whose interests our purchasing decisions are serving and in what proportion. We want to know what commercial arrangements cause the appearance of the Red logo on everything from T-shirts to strollers to laptops, and what the label represents socially.

Watchdogs, academics, journalists and blogs like this one make it their business to filter information on the public's behalf. Ensuring that regulators have access to this information is also important, because they supervise charitable activities. Hopefully this will help them to 'upgrade their choice' of regulatory tools, to use another Red slogan.

The fact that The Persuaders is required to donate its profits is reassuring though it also raises some questions: Why does the Global Fund indicate that The Persuaders is not a donor? And why not make this (positive) feature more obvious? Maybe it's because The Persuaders don't actually profit from the Red brand, so no money moves. Or maybe it's because The Persuaders would prefer to avoid regulation as a "commercial co-venturer", which would require additional disclosure.

With regard to regulating The Persuaders as a professional fundraiser, the definition of Professional Fundraiser in NY includes: "Any person who directly or indirectly by contract ... for compensation or other consideration (a) plans, manages, conducts, carries on, or assists in connection with a charitable solicitation ... ; (b) solicits on behalf of a charitable organization or any other person; or (c) who advertises that the purchase or use of goods, services, entertainment or any other thing of value will benefit a charitable organization but is not a commercial co-venturer.” The Persuaders solicits and assists in the solicitation of funds from the public through Bono and Shriver-led public outreach on T.V. shows like Oprah, and at concerts, as well as through traditional fundraising events like the Sotheby's art auction. They also engage consumers directly: when consumers buy a Red Gap T-shirt, they're buying it because it's Red, not just because it's Gap (that's the point of Red, after all). And The Persuaders are the ones coordinating the Red donation machine, which has generated over $100 million in contributions from the corporate partners. They clearly carry out these activities on behalf of the Global Fund (their only charity partner), and advertise that buying Red will benefit that charity.

These activities affect the public's trust just as traditional fundraising models do, and should be regulated accordingly. And even though The Persuaders receive no financial compensation from the Global Fund, my paper argues that the licensing fees paid to The Persuaders amount to fundraiser fees, and that the Global Fund has essentially outsourced the payment of fundraiser fees to the corporate partners.

Extending charities' regulation to encompass the Red model is important. Otherwise, the door is open to charities to avoid regulation simply by having a third party pay their fundraisers!

Bono vs. Moyo, Round Two

Last week, ONE, the advocacy organization founded by Bono, apparently sent out an email to some of the Africans in their address book. The subject: Dambisa Moyo’s new book Dead Aid, recently released in the US. The plan: to persuade some high profile Africans to provide quotes in support of ONE’s position that Moyo’s ideas are dangerously mistaken. The vigorous and public debate that has greeted the release of Dead Aid is a good thing for transparency and effectiveness in aid, no matter what you think of Moyo’s book. ONE apparently doesn't agree. There are two things wrong with ONE’s campaign to discredit Moyo.

First of all, ONE misrepresents Moyo’s ideas to better tear them down. For example, ONE characterizes Moyo’s plan as a call to “shut off all aid in 5 years,” when Moyo is very clear about excluding humanitarian aid and NGO/ charitable aid from her discussion.

Second, rounding up some Africans who happen to disagree with Zambian-born Moyo doesn’t alter the quality of her proposals, which deserve to be debated on their own merits. (We’ve blogged about the intellectually dishonest technique of the “authenticity trump card” before.) When the ONE campaign says in its email “We are collecting quotes from Africans who might disagree with her…”, it seems to be saying we will not trust or allow Africans to have this debate on its merits on their own.

The people at ONE seem to implicitly justify this campaign by portraying themselves as the only small voice bold enough to speak out against Moyo. An article on their website claims that “while Dead Aid has been getting a lot of buzz, it hasn't been getting much, if any, scrutiny.” Even a cursory scan of Moyo’s press shows that Dead Aid has gotten reviews from all sides, plenty of them vociferously critical.

Do Bono and ONE yet understand that aid to the poor is not just a matter a celebrity fund-raising, but a difficult challenge that needs a vigorous debate on what works and what doesn’t?

Did U2 Have Africa Celebrate U2?

Not sure what to make of this, so I just state the facts: an African-American record producer arranged to have well-known African singers do U2 songs for this album. U2 obviously had to sign off on an album in which Africa thanks U2 with U2 songs, due to copyright laws, and in fact the producer thanks U2 band members.

One African who is not celebrating U2 these days is Dambisa Moyo (who is speaking at NYU tomorrow night), author of the new book Dead Aid, in which she says:

Scarcely does one see Africa’s (elected) officials or … African policymakers… offer an opinion on what should be done, or what might actually work to save the continent from its regression. This very important responsibility has, for all intents and purposes, and to the bewilderment of many an African, been left to musicians who reside outside Africa.

What do you think?

How About a Free Press to Hold Aid to Africa Accountable?

Courageous independent Ugandan journalist Andrew Mwenda was featured in a mass circulation magazine last weekend, getting some well-deserved recognition.

Mwenda has been in and out of jail for his criticism of the (aid-supported) authoritarian Ugandan government. He was a recipient of the International Press Freedom Award for 2008.

Mwenda started his own independent newspaper (known appropriately as the Independent) in Uganda, after complaining the government was curtailing the freedom of the newspaper where he previously worked.

He also is a frequent critic of aid agencies’ operations in Africa for tolerating corruption and poor results, which caused Bono to heckle him in a famous confrontation at the TED conference in Tanzania in 2007.

A free press is an important way in which we hold our governments accountable in rich democratic countries. Why shouldn’t Africans have the right to freedom of the press as well?

Mwenda will be speaking at the NYU conference “What Would the Poor Say? Debates in Aid Evalution” this Friday, February 6.