This is clickbait and Apple being targeted is kind of silly as the issue affects thousands of companies. The platform Benevity is used by thousands of corporations to manage donation match programs. The way these programs work is that employees go on and search for a 501c3 they want to donate to. They can pick any 501c3 they want. They make a donation and their company will match it. So, Apple itself isn’t choosing who to donate to, the only reason Apple is donating to these organizations is because they are 501c3 and their employees chose to donate to them. Some employees are also having their donations to Palestinian organizations matched through the same program. Also, this is not Apple-specific, it is literally every company using Benevity, or a similar matching donation platform.
The only way to stop this would be to stop certain organizations from registering as 501c3 or to keep a list of organizations that are blocked. Of course, anything like a blocklist is likely to be highly political and I doubt any company would want to get into this business given that it would probably cause unforeseen backlash. Maybe if the US government banned doing business with Israel like it has with Russia, Cuba, Iran, and North Korea that would also work.
Still, singling out behaviour can be more effective than talking about it more generally. And when one organisation changes their policy others often follow.
Yes, it would be great if this was managed more centrally but in the absence of that let’s hold companies accountable. The victims here in the end are Palestinians, not Apple.
I don’t think this is likely to happen. There are very wealthy zionists on wall st that will do unpredictable things if any company were to do something like this. In the case of university protests they had a private chat group with the city and state leaders, pressuring them to use the police against students. They’ve gotten multiple college presidents fired. I doubt any company wants to wade into this fight. There is zero upside for them. If anything, they’ll just end their donation matching if it becomes too political.
I mean, would you rather corporations not donate to non-profits? If you think this issue means corporations donating to non-profits is a net-negative and that attitude becomes prevalent, then they will stop doing it. I’m sure companies like Apple would rather keep the money if it isn’t buying them good will.
I don’t assume that. I’m just saying what is considered good is controversial and political some times, so companies trying to offer a generic matching program will find themselves stuck in the middle. This is a position they don’t want to be in because they’re likely to just piss off someone they don’t want to piss off on either side, when all they were trying to do was match donations, which was a business they got in to because they were trying to do some “good.” If it ends up attracting more negative attention than positive attention, they’ll just stop doing it. I mean who wants to give away money for free if it is just going to make people hate you?
Apple never gives out money for free. In this case what they wanted to get was goodwill, and now it’s backfiring. Calling them out is the right thing to do IMO, they had zero intentions of “doing good”.
They do not choose which non-profit to donate to, their employees do and they match. And it’s not just Apple, thousands of companies use Benevity and are also matching employee donations. It’s a pretty standard thing, so calling out Apple specifically is misleading. It sounds like in your view you’d rather that no company match any donations at all because you disagree with some of the 501c3s that exist.
