The world’s largest advocacy organizations manage billions of dollars in investments, properties, and recurring revenues from their headquarters in London, New York, Amsterdam, and Washington, DC. The goals of spending such money are ones few people would dispute. Who doesn’t want to see the health and development of the world’s poorest people improve? Who doesn’t want to protect the global environment or human rights?
Participating in the economy of “making a difference” is costly, however, and worldwide the income and assets of activist organizations keep climbing. Hundred-million-dollar budgets are now common. Not only are these activist organizations spending like corporations, but increasingly they are making strategic investments to expand operations. Buying stocks and real estate is standard practice; a few are even gambling on high-risk financial products in search of strong returns. Certainly, when Karl Marx chided capitalists in 1867 for being obsessed with accruing ever more – “Accumulate, accumulate! That is Moses and the Prophets!” – he never imagined that activist organizations would one day accumulate like capitalists.1
Fundraising can comprise upward of 30 percent of the annual budget of nonprofit organizations. Amnesty International, for instance, spent €59 million on fundraising in 2010 (out of €204 million in expenditures). Some nonprofits, such as the Susan G. Komen for the Cure, have annual fundraising and public education budgets of more than US$200 million – in 2011 more than the gross domestic product of a small country like Kiribati or the Marshall Islands.2
Activists are increasing revenue streams at every turn. They are lobbying governments, teaming up with the ultra-rich, partnering with big business, and licensing their brands to manufacturers. Komen for the Cure is urging consumers to buy its pink scarves, pink socks, and pink buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken with the “purpose to end breast cancer forever.”3 International NGOs as well as community groups are taking more corporate donations, too. Money, even corporate money, advocacy groups are telling supporters, will make the world “green” and “humane.” Meanwhile, NGO fundraising campaigns commonly rely on unpaid or underpaid people hoping to land a permanent job in the advocacy industry.4
Already in 1997 David Hulme and Michael Edwards were asking, “Are NGOs losing the ‘special relationship’ with the poor, with radical ideas, and with alternatives to the orthodoxies of the rich and powerful that they have claimed in the past?”5 Today the answer is a loud “yes.” Some activists are cooperating with firms earnestly; others are doing so begrudgingly – a necessity, they feel, for any real influence in a world of money politics. Gwen Ruta, a vice-president of programs with responsibility for corporate partnerships at the Environmental Defense Fund, expresses the “compromise” sentiment: “what we’re looking for is where we can be the most transformative, and that often means not working with companies that are squeaky clean. So, we’re working with Walmart and DuPont. Not everyone thinks they are the fair-haired boys of the environment set, but these companies have leverage, and we want to be able to use that leverage.”6
Of course, many activists reject such thinking. And many are refusing to work with big business. Broadly speaking, however, the corporatization of activism is clearly shifting the values and approaches of activist organizations. More activists now accept the world order, moving away from what Canadian author Naomi Klein has called a “systemic critique” – where one locates causes and solutions within capitalism as a whole rather than within a specific policy or company.7 We see this trend away from systemic criticism in changes in the goals, measures of success, and methods of activist organizations. Three trends within activism, we argue in this chapter, are especially revealing: a rise in big-business partnerships; a turn to capitalist philanthropy and corporate-style fundraising; and an embrace of international trade and mass consumption as “solutions” to market ills.
Activists have long worked with small businesses and community leaders. Many to this day regard E. F. Schumacher’s 1973 book Small is Beautiful as the bible for thinking about how to advance “economics as if people mattered.”8 Yet, since 1990, one of the most noticeable shifts within activism has been the growth of NGO partnerships with big business, including multinational oil companies, multinational pharmaceutical companies, and big-box retailers and brand manufacturers. The growth of such partnerships shows no signs of slowing even after the global financial crisis of 2008 exposed yet another iceberg of business transgressions: if anything, the trend has been gaining speed since the crisis.
In 2012 Time magazine reported that the US branch of the Sierra Club – one of America’s oldest conservation organizations – had accepted more than US$25 million from the natural gas industry between 2007 and 2010. Most of the donations came from Chesapeake Energy, one of the world’s largest gas drillers and a promoter of “fracking,” or hydrologic fracturing of rock formations to increase oil and gas yields.9 Before then many supporters had been wondering why the Sierra Club was taking a “pro-gas stance.” Author Sandra Steingraber raged after the news broke of the Chesapeake Energy donations: “It was as if, on the eve of D-day, the anti-Fascist partisans had discovered that Churchill was actually in cahoots with the Axis forces.”10
The Sierra Club is not unique. NGOs are reaching out to big oil and gas like never before. Antony Burgmans, a former CEO of Unilever and a current non-executive board member of British Petroleum, sits on the board of WWF International. BP has also donated millions of dollars to the Nature Conservancy, which many critics saw as responding lamely to the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. Coalitions of environmental groups and corporations to address issues such as climate change are extending partnerships. The US Climate Action Partnership (USCAP), for instance, brings organizations such as the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Nature Conservancy, the World Resources Institute, and the Environmental Defense Fund together with oil companies such as Shell, as well as DuPont, Dow Chemical, Chrysler, Johnson & Johnson, Rio Tinto, PepsiCo, General Electric, and Weyerhaeuser.11
Similarly, despite past misconduct – such as Shell in the Niger Delta in the 1990s – and despite ongoing worldwide campaigns against oil and gas extraction – such as against Chevron in Ecuador – social justice groups are also partnering with multinational oil and gas companies. The Amazon Defense Coalition is suing Chevron for “environmental crimes.”12 Still, Chevron is managing to find many NGOs willing, even eager, to partner, among them those dedicated to improving socioeconomic conditions in developing countries, from international NGOs (e.g., Save the Children) to community organizations (e.g., Women’s Initiative for Self-Employment and the Association of Business Women of Kazakhstan). Likewise, ExxonMobil’s NGO partners range widely and include Africare, the Centre for Development and Population Activities, the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women, the International Center for Research on Women, and Vital Voices.13
Multistakeholder coalitions are further linking social NGOs to the oil and gas industry. To increase the transparency of oil and mining revenues, the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative involves executives from companies such as Chevron and Shell and activists from NGOs such as Transparency International, Global Witness, and Oxfam. The UN Global Compact brings hundreds of NGOs, including WWF and World Vision, into partnership with both oil and pharmaceutical companies and, as we will document later in the chapter, big-box retailers and brand manufacturers.
Many social NGOs continue to avoid accepting money directly from multinational oil and gas companies. Barbara Stocking, former chief executive of Oxfam (Great Britain), explains: “We won’t take any money from any of the extractive industries, except maybe their foundation arm and only then in an emergency.”14 Social activists, as Stocking says, are more willing to accept corporate money indirectly, not just through foundations, but also through initiatives such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. This fund, which distributes millions of dollars in grants to NGOs, receives considerable corporate funding, notably a US$30 million donation from Chevron between 2008 and 2010. We could list an almost endless number of other examples: Shell, to add one more, is giving millions of dollars a year to the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves.15
In 2008 Shell acknowledged the following “dilemma” for future growth: “How do we increase global reach and build on global brands while recognising and responding to the popular antipathy towards big business and globalisation?”16 Partnering with activist organizations has been a vital part of the answer to this question for every oil and gas company. And oil and gas revenues have continued to soar since 2008. Royal Dutch Shell, ExxonMobil, and BP were ranked first, second, and fourth respectively on the 2012 Fortune 500’s ranking of the world’s biggest companies in terms of revenue (Walmart was third). Most activists remain wary of the ever rising power of big oil and gas. A few activists still rail against practices they see as corrupt, unjust, and unsustainable. And yet, even with disasters such as the 2010 BP oil spill, oil and gas companies are navigating the “antipathy” toward more growth remarkably well. Who ten years ago would have thought big oil and gas would become such an important partner and funder of NGOs worldwide?
Activist critiques of the pharmaceutical industry have been scathing over the years. Prices and patents, critics contend, put profits before human life. Preventable diseases and conditions – malaria, tuberculosis, diarrhea, dehydration – kill millions of poor people every year in the developing world; meanwhile, doctors prescribe needless drugs to hundreds of millions of fretful patients with deeper pockets, prodded along by pharmaceutical brochures, industry “research,” and perhaps even a gift or two. These concerns have not gone away. Yet activists hoping to cure diseases and improve access to healthcare are increasingly turning to the pharmaceutical industry for assistance.
Like big oil and gas, financial contributions are the most direct link between nonprofit organizations and pharmaceutical firms. To name just a few examples, Alzheimer’s Disease International has received funding from Pfizer, the world’s leading research-based pharmaceutical corporation. In 2010, the US-based National Alliance on Mental Illness accepted US$35,000 from Pfizer and US$250,000 from Eli Lilly (the makers of Prozac). The Canadian Organization for Rare Disorders has received funding from Novartis, Merck, and Pfizer. Each year the American Heart Association takes millions of dollars from Schering-Plough and Merck. In some cases the pharmaceutical industry represents a tiny share of an NGO’s total budget. This is the case for the American Cancer Society, where funding from pharmaceutical corporations was US$10 million in 2009, or 1.2 percent of its total revenue. In other instances, however, the percentage is substantial, as with Mental Health America (which advocates for patient rights), where more than three-quarters of its US$3.2 million in revenue in 2009 came from medical firms.17
More NGOs are also cooperating with pharmaceutical companies on specific projects and events. In 2011 GlaxoSmithKline partnered with three NGOs – Save the Children in West Africa, the African Medical and Research Foundation in East and Southern Africa, and CARE International UK in Asia-Pacific – to build up healthcare services and infrastructure in developing countries. Pharmaceutical executives have sponsored and spoken at Komen’s Race for the Cure Rallies. And the American National Health Council, which says it provides “a united voice for people with chronic diseases and disabilities,” has partnered with GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Johnson & Johnson, Novartis, and Eli Lilly.18
The presence of pharmaceutical executives on NGO boards is growing, too. Of the thirty-one board members of the American Diabetes Association in 2009, at least eleven had ties with medical-device, insurance, or pharmaceutical firms. The US-based Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance disclosed that three of its board members consulted or spoke for Eli Lilly, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Pfizer, and others between 2006 and 2009. Thirteen of the North American Spine Society’s twenty board members in 2010 had financial connections to medical-device firms.19
Besides bilateral partnerships, social organizations are cooperating with pharmaceutical companies through multi-stakeholder coalitions, particularly for projects in developing countries. The UN Global Compact, for instance, connects international NGOs such as Amnesty International, as well as local and national NGOs from across the world, with pharmaceutical and other companies to advance human and labor rights and improve environmental and health management. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, as we saw earlier, receives funding from oil companies. But pharmaceutical companies also support the fund, as do brand companies such as Giorgio Armani, Apple, Starbucks, Motorola, and Gap.
Pharmaceutical executives are also helping to steer foundation funds and manage nongovernmental health projects. Daniel Vasella, former CEO and board chair of Novartis, has sat on the advisory panel of the Global Health Program of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The board of directors of the US-based AIDS Institute includes William Schuyler, GlaxoSmithKline’s VP of federal government relations.20
Global health consultations do not always require NGOs to divulge connections to pharmaceutical companies. The World Health Organization’s Intergovernmental Working Group on Public Health, Innovation, and Intellectual Property (IGWG), for example, did not oblige NGOs to disclose corporate ties when submitting remarks and recommendations in 2007 on plans to improve medical care in developing countries. Surveying submissions, the US nonprofit organization Essential Action found that “many of the organizations erroneously appeared unconnected to pharmaceutical companies” with “a financial stake in the outcome of the IGWG process.” Essential Action found further that, even when not counting submissions from nongovernmental “pharmaceutical trade associations,” submissions from NGOs with ties to drug companies “outnumbered those from independent groups by a margin of 2 to 1.”21
Ten years ago the vast majority of activists spurned the pharmaceutical industry. Oxfam’s Barbara Stocking sees the start of the Doha trade negotiations in 2001 as a turning point for NGO–corporate relations. “Until about five or 10 years ago, much of our emphasis was on campaigning against the private sector and the things it was doing, particularly the extractive industry and the pharmaceutical industry. But as we got more and more involved in the Doha trade round I think things began to change quite a lot in Oxfam.”22
Today most activists, including Stocking, remain wary, and some remain noisily critical. For many of them the stark difference in infant and maternal mortality rates between the global North and the global South still represents one of the world’s most egregious inequalities. And many are continuing to call on the pharmaceutical industry to do more to improve access to medicines, especially to life-saving drugs for the world’s poorest people. Now, however, many activists are requesting these changes as an “industry partner,” courting pharmaceutical companies instead of demanding far-reaching reforms to their powers and profits.
Partnerships between NGOs and big-brand companies are developing even faster than those with energy and pharmaceutical corporations. Environmentalists have led the way, collaborating with, and accepting money from, big-box retailers and brand manufacturers. The Environmental Defense Fund blazed a trail in 1990 by partnering with McDonald’s to phase out the restaurant chain’s Styrofoam packaging. Today such partnerships are ubiquitous. IKEA works with WWF as a “marketing partner,” providing funding through the Global Forest and Trade Network to “create a new market for environmentally responsible forest products.” Conservation International works with Starbucks on sourcing coffee beans and with Walmart on tracking the sources of the company’s jewelry products. Monsanto and the Walt Disney Company are two other “featured” corporate partners of Conservation International (as of June 2013).23
Executives from these companies also sit on the boards of environmental NGOs. As of June 2013, the board of trustees of the Natural Resources Defense Council includes Robert J. Fisher, past chairman of the Gap board of directors, and Alan F. Horn, current chairman of the Walt Disney Studios, while Neville Isdell, former CEO of Coca-Cola, is chairman of the board of the US branch of WWF (known in the US as the World Wildlife Fund). Rob Walton, chair of Walmart, also chairs the executive committee of Conservation International’s board of directors, which, as of the same date, includes Paul Polman of Unilever (current chief executive), Heidi Miller of JPMorgan Chase (retired former president), and Orin Smith of Starbucks (retired former CEO).24
Social and human rights organizations have generally been less receptive to partnering with big-brand companies. But this, too, is changing. The Fair Labor Association, for example, connects NGOs such as the Global Fairness Initiative, the Maquila Solidarity Network, and Human Rights First with companies such as Nestlé, H&M, Nike, Adidas, Apple, and New Balance. Other social NGOs have negotiated bilateral deals with big brands, such as the Human Rights Campaign has done with Microsoft, American Airlines, and Coca-Cola, or Oxfam has done with Starbucks and Unilever. As with environmental NGOs, the presence of big brands is also increasing on the boards of social justice organizations. The board of directors of the US branch of one of the world’s largest humanitarian NGOs, Care International, for instance, includes (as of June 2013) Emery Koenig (executive vice-president of Cargill), Eduardo Castro-Wright (former vice-chairman of Walmart), and Alex Cummings (VP and chief administrative officer of Coca-Cola).25
Big-brand companies have even begun to form, fund, and manage coalitions with NGOs, many around gender and women’s rights.26 Nike has led the way by launching and funding “the Girl Effect,” a support network for nonprofit efforts to help adolescent girls living in poverty in developing countries. Nestlé and others are funding the UN’s “Every Woman Every Child” program – what the UN calls an “unprecedented global movement” of business, governments, and civil society groups to improve the healthcare and living conditions of women and children worldwide. The International Business Leaders Forum (comprising over 150 multinational corporations) is connecting executives from Nike, Shell, and many others to leaders from NGOs such as Transparency International, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch. And the World Bank’s “Gender Action Plan” to enhance economic opportunities for women is linking NGOs to firms such as Unilever and Nike. Other transnational governance and development institutions are also facilitating NGO–business cooperation. The UN Global Compact is connecting companies such as Nike, Bayer, and DuPont to social and environmental projects across the developing world.27
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is full of praise for these corporate partners. “Companies are often treated with suspicion when they enter global development, but they are playing a central role in improving the lives of women and children. These are smart decisions – visionary leaders recognise the value of investing in the health of women and children.”28 These “visionary” executives can also open doors to the rich and famous.
Philanthropy in Europe goes back at least to the merchant families of Tudor England of the sixteenth century and to the European Renaissance between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries. In the United States it precedes the American Civil War of 1861–5, when rich landholders and businessmen, not organizations, were providing most of the charity. Worldwide, more managed charity began to spread with industrialization, with organizations assisting the “unfortunate” poor (e.g., children and widows). Charities grew during the early 1900s as multimillionaires set up foundations to support charitable giving, as well as, of course, offer income-tax breaks for such giving. In the United States, Andrew Carnegie founded the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching in 1905; Margaret Olivia Sage launched the Russell Sage Foundation in 1907; and John D. Rockefeller established the Rockefeller Foundation in 1913.29
Philanthropy grew in importance over the next three decades. For the United States, sociologist Ira Reid wrote in 1944: “Organized philanthropy is playing a significant role in this age of tottering social standards, crumbling religious sanctions, perverse race attitudes and selfish and ulterior motives.”30 Donations from individuals, foundations, and companies in the United States totaled about US$6.7 billion in 1955. By 1982 the amount of American charitable giving had reached US$60 billion; and by 2012 it was more than US$315 billion.31
It is not only the sheer scale but also the focus and content of philanthropy that is different now. As public services worldwide fail to keep pace with societal needs, schools and hospitals have come to rely on charities, foundation grants, and corporate philanthropy. Every year the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, for example, distributes hundreds of millions of dollars to schools and for education across the United States. In the developing world, private foundations provide crucial support for small-scale farmers as well as for those in need of medical care and clean water.32
Foundations such as Carnegie and Rockefeller have always been long-term investors. But for most of the twentieth century these were exceptions; today, on the other hand, long-term investing is the norm. And many foundations and venture philanthropists are going even further, designing programs in close concert with firms striving to expand markets and increase revenues. Like traditional investors, such philanthropists are demanding “profitable” returns on donations, giving rise to what Matthew Bishop and Michael Green call “philanthrocapitalism.”
Traditional giving is failing to solve social problems: thus, those wanting to help, so goes a common refrain, have no choice but to integrate business thinking and leverage markets. The world needs leading capitalists to invest in poor communities: money-making and money-giving need to go hand in hand. This shift toward more strategic philanthropy began to take off in the 1990s; since then, however, donors have become bolder, increasingly expecting concrete returns from donations.33
Strategic philanthropy aims to stimulate demand for consumer goods within poor communities. “[E]ntrepreneurs and policymakers alike need to see every person on the planet as a potential customer,” recommends nonprofit venture fund CEO Jacqueline Novogratz. Indeed, venture capitalists are eager to access this “fortune at the bottom” of the world economy. And NGOs are queuing to partner with venture capitalists. In 2011 Human Rights Watch received a grant of US$100 million (paid out over ten years) from the Foundation to Promote Open Society, chaired by billionaire financier George Soros. NGOs are lining up to receive grants from the Gates Foundation to give poor people an opportunity “to lift themselves out of hunger and extreme poverty” (emphasis added). Why is corporate interest in the poor soaring? The answer for Nike’s Girl Effect network is unequivocal: investing in the poor “isn’t a social issue; it’s smart economics.” In brief, besides legitimizing the power of corporations, such initiatives allow firms to develop new markets.34
Such philanthropy absolves the guilt of those making money off the poor. Indeed, making money is seen as vital for rescuing communities from decades of inept charity and aid. “Charities have failed for decades to deliver,” argues Kurt Hoffman, former director of the Shell Foundation. “Do we want to continue with the status quo or apply some fresh, inherently efficient and potentially very effective thinking to find new solutions?”35 Taking a business approach to philanthropy allows capitalists to invest in societal development without foregoing profits. Such philanthropy, in the words of Bishop and Green, is “market conscious” and “strategic,” always looking to “leverage” every donation.36 The world’s three wealthiest people in February 2012 – Carlos Slim Helu, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett, with a combined net worth at that time of US$174 billion – are all strategic philanthropists.
American billionaires are at the forefront of strategic philanthropy. In 2010 Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced “The Giving Pledge,” a campaign to inspire America’s wealthiest people to make a “moral commitment” (not legally binding) to give away at least half of their fortune to philanthropic causes. This followed Buffett’s decision in 2006 to donate more than US$30 billion to the Gates Foundation to match earlier support from the Gates family. Over 100 pledges had been made by June 2013: one example is George Lucas, the filmmaker whose Star Wars movies were among his blockbusters that made him a billionaire.37
Celebrity activists go back at least to the civil rights, anti-war, and environmental movements of the 1950s and 1960s. Pop idols and movie stars have also long been ambassadors for animal rights, gender equality, and gay and lesbian rights. Celebrity activism has been surging in recent years, however, as NGOs with big annual fundraising campaigns compete for donations, corporate sponsorship, and media coverage. Oxfam’s “celebrity ambassadors” include actors Colin Firth, Minnie Driver, and Scarlett Johansson, as well as the rock artists Annie Lennox and Coldplay. Leonardo DiCaprio is on the US board of WWF, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the International Fund for Animal Welfare. Angelina Jolie is a Special Envoy for Refugee Issues for the United Nations. Anne Hathaway, Ben Stiller, Sean Penn, and Barbra Streisand are among the “celebrity supporters” of the William J. Clinton Foundation. Oprah Winfrey is also a celebrity supporter of the Clinton Foundation, as well as endowing a foundation in her own name in 2009.
Now just about every famous person attaches a “cause” to his or her personal brand. Activist organizations hold up superstars as examples of what individuals who “care” can achieve. Every cause in every country seems inundated with celebrities. Movie stars have posed nude in support of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Martin Sheen has opposed the Canadian seal hunt on behalf of the International Fund for Animal Welfare. Amnesty International uses singers to spread its messages, hosting benefit concerts and releasing CDs with songs by performers such as Avril Lavigne, the Black Eyed Peas, and U2.
Much good is coming from celebrity activism and capitalist philanthropy. Such efforts, however, are to some extent legitimating NGO–corporate partnerships and the inequality and lifestyles that capitalism affords, even in the face of the poverty and hardship of the world’s “bottom billion.”38 The Giving Pledge and venture philanthropy and celebrity ambassadors send a message: being super-rich is fine, even a goal to aspire to, as long as you support a good cause or two. This both buttresses and depoliticizes the growing inequalities of wealth since the 1980s. “I remember a day,” American political economist Robert Reich wrote in 2006, “when government collected billions of dollars from tycoons like these, as well as from ordinary taxpayers, and when our democratic process decided what the billions would be devoted to. … I don’t want to sound like an ingrate or overly sentimental, but I preferred it the old way.”39
Without a doubt many nonprofit leaders still lament, and on occasion lambast, growing inequality. In 2013 Oxfam called on the world to confront head on the dual crises of “extreme inequality” and “extreme wealth,” noting that the real income of the world’s wealthiest 1 percent went up by more than 60 percent between 1988 and 2008. Even the World Economic Forum’s Global Risk 2013 report sees “severe income disparity” as one of the most likely and pressing global risks for at least the next ten years.40 Yet now, not only are many NGOs celebrating the generosity of billionaires and movie stars, some NGO leaders are even earning corporate-style salaries for leading corporate-style advertising and fundraising campaigns.
In 2010, soon after introducing its “Double Down” sandwich – cheese, bacon, and sauce between two deep-fried chicken breasts (the “bread”) – KFC launched a “Buckets for the Cure” partnership with Susan G. Komen for the Cure. The goal was commendable: to raise funds for cancer research by selling pink buckets of deep-fried chicken. But the irony of curing cancer by selling more fast food must have made some pause at Komen for the Cure. After all, obesity is a known risk factor for breast cancer. The lure of KFC money, however, was no doubt enticing. Such disconnects between a “cause” and the “goal” of a corporate sponsor are becoming increasingly common. For some NGOs, fundraising has become the top, and at times seemingly the only, priority, as they market, lend, and license their brand – in effect, selling it for “profit.”
Nancy Brinker, the founder and current CEO of Komen for the Cure, is a master fundraiser and marketer. Under her direction, breast cancer, in the words of Barbara Ehrenreich, “blossomed from wallflower to the most popular girl at the corporate charity prom.” Komen turned pink ribbons (and even the color pink) into a symbol for breast cancer – what professor Samantha King describes as “a marketable product with which consumers, corporations, and politicians are eager to associate.” The market is large and the consumers are committed. In 2011 alone, over 1.6 million people joined in Race for the Cure events.41
Komen has been at the forefront of the swing toward cause marketing. It has a Million Dollar Council Elite of million-dollar-a-year donors and scores of small business partnerships. Since 1982 the foundation has raised more than US$2.2 billion. Komen’s upbeat message and fun-filled activities are attractive to any company looking to enhance its image as well as sell its products. Companies on board as of June 2013 include Ford, General Electric, American Airlines, Yoplait, General Mills, and Walgreens.42
Corporations in the past tended to avoid long-term obligations to any cause, preferring instead to make one-off donations. Marketing a cause creates larger and longer commitments by linking the cause to sales and the corporate brand. Selling a cause, as Komen for the Cure demonstrates so well, can generate substantial returns – for both activists and corporations. Such results are transforming business philanthropy, as professor King writes, “from a relatively random, eclectic, and unscientific activity to a highly calculated and measured strategy that is integral to a business’s profit-making function.”43 Komen is representative of a broad shift in the strategies and tactics of nonprofit organizations. By marketing a cause – cancer, HIV/AIDS, endangered species – nonprofits look to gain a competitive fundraising advantage by reaching people’s desires for social justice and environmental sustainability. To fundraise, nonprofits end up becoming advertisers and marketers, like companies spending millions of dollars a year on branding.
Such fundraising is benefiting from a worldwide shift among citizens toward consumption and personal acts as a way of trying to promote change (riding a bike to raise funds for cancer research) rather than by participating in more strategic collective action. Accompanying this is a growing acceptance of markets as an efficient and acceptable means to pursue nonprofit objectives. Together, this is lending strength to those who see business participation as valuable, even necessary, for “successful” activism.
At the same time, however, commercialization is undermining the vitality of alternative social and political visions. Social and ecological crises end up seeming unavoidable, even natural. Activist politics is gutted of its radicalism. The growing reach of consumer activism – of fair trade, of ethical purchases, of sustainable shopping – is further commodifying hopes for a better world.
“Another World is Possible”: for anti-globalization activists in the 1990s, such slogans were part of a rallying cry against the World Trade Organization.44 Those wanting another world were demanding an end to what the WTO was describing as “free trade.” Only then would it be possible to improve the lives of ordinary people in the global South. Since that time activists have shifted away from such radical ends and toward supporting efforts to certify and label traded products, seeing ethical markets and fair trade as a viable and effective way to enrich and empower farmers in the global South.
Thousands of consumer products – chocolate, bananas, tea, wine, flowers, shoes – carry fair-trade labels. Different labeling schemes use different rules. For international trade, the most prominent is Fairtrade International. To qualify as fair trade, producers must organize democratically, avoid child labor, and follow principles of sustainability. The idea is to give garment workers or loggers or farmers more of the benefits of international trade (e.g., higher wages or better prices). Most fair-trade schemes aim to guarantee a minimum price as well as provide some additional benefits for poorer communities, such as a school or road. Fair-trade labels are said to allow consumers to make informed, responsible, and ethical purchases. The program Fairtrade, for example, claims to offer a way for consumers to ensure that “farmers and workers” get a “fair share of the benefits of trade.”45
Today’s top-down and corporate-run fair trade looks nothing like it did when it was first emerging in the 1950s as a grassroots movement to develop alternative markets for South–North trade. It started to change in the 1980s with certified labeling and the growing interest of mainstream companies. Since then, as Gavin Fridell, author of Fair Trade Coffee, writes, “the fair trade vision has changed from an alternative trading network composed of small ATOs [alternative trade organizations] dealing exclusively in fair trade products, to a market niche driven by the interests of giant conventional corporations with minor commitments to fair trade given their overall size.”46 At the same time, NGO leaders have become big advocates of mainstreaming fair-trade products into companies such as Starbucks, Nike, and Nestlé.
In 2011 Fair Trade USA split from Fairtrade International and then revised its standards to increase the opportunities for more mainstream firms to participate in fair trade. Is fair trade morphing into old-style trade? Some scholars and activists are now asking this question.47 Far more NGOs, however, are embracing big-business fair trade and pointing to rising fair-trade sales as a sign of progress.
One example is Conservation International, which is assisting Starbucks (the world’s largest coffee chain, with around 18,000 outlets) to source coffee beans. Starbucks first began to sell fair-trade coffee in 2000, and by 2011 it was claiming to buy more than 85 percent of its coffee beans from third-party verified fair-trade sources (primarily Fairtrade) or from sources certified under Coffee and Farmer Equity (CAFE) Practices – its own guidelines, developed in partnership with Conservation International. Starbucks is promising to source only fair-trade coffee by 2015.48
Many other big-brand companies are also selling more fair-trade products, including Sainsbury’s, Nestlé, Walmart, and McDonald’s. Fair trade advocates are arguing that surging sales will encourage even more firms to purchase and sell fair-trade goods, progressively improving conditions for farmers and workers worldwide. It is perfectly fine, so goes the reasoning, to continue to shop at Kmart or eat at Burger King so long as at least some of the purchases are ethical and sustainable.
Activists are also working hard to certify and label products as “green” – balancing socioeconomic and environmental factors to improve working conditions, financial benefits, and ecological management. The Marine Stewardship Council certifies seafood and “sustainable fishing”; the Forest Stewardship Council and the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification certify forest products. The Round Table on Responsible Soy Association and the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil are facilitating stakeholder dialogues and developing standards to certify sustainably produced soy and palm oil. NGOs are working alongside multinational companies to develop and implement all of these schemes – and thus mainstream green products for mass consumption. Governments now support eco-labeling programs for consumer products too, such as the EU Ecolabel program and the US Energy Star program.49
Such efforts to make trade more sustainable and fairer do not contest profit-maximizing business models. Of course, not all activists support these efforts; and some, especially members of smaller and more local groups, see a need to dismantle the world economy for any real chance for social justice or sustainability. For them, legitimating marginally less damaging and exploitative ways of mass producing and exporting goods to well-off consumers will not help – and could well do harm.
Local resistance to the nonprofit Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) illustrates the tension between trade activism and community activism. WWF and the Dutch Sustainable Trade Initiative founded ASC in 2009 to certify, and offer a consumer logo for, “responsibly farmed seafood.” It brings environmentalists, scientists, and certifiers together with aquaculture producers, seafood processors, and food retailers to certify the mass production of shrimp and salmon (as well as some other seafood) for export.
Critics, however, see the Aquaculture Stewardship Council as doing more to advance the interests of industry than the wellbeing of locals working for, or living near, aquaculture farms. In 2012, a coalition of community activists in Asia issued a joint statement calling ASC “a crude attempt” that has “perpetuated unsustainable production systems.” ASC consultation with locals has been a sham, according to Riza Damanik of KIARA, a network of local fishing groups in Indonesia. “We saw the WWF Aquaculture Dialogue in Jakarta and protested at the venue,” he said; “99% of those in attendance were from the shrimp industry and the government. WWF’s claim that communities were involved is a joke – they organized their so-called dialogue with affected local communities in a posh city venue.” Alfredo Quarto of the Mangrove Action Project, which takes a “grassroots” approach to express the “voices of the global South,” calls the standards “just one more ‘pie-in-the-sky’ attempt to justify and expand the profits of an unsustainable and destructive industry, resulting in further loss of mangrove forests and displacement of local communities.”50
For at least some community activists, then, much of the analysis of trade by international NGOs, as Aziz Choudry and Dip Kapoor explain, is set within “a compartmentalized worldview that reproduces the way that free trade and investment agreements redefine broad spheres of human activity in ‘trade-related’ terms… . These NGOs fail to question fundamental assumptions underlying such definitions, remaining instead within the parameters set by international trade negotiations, trade law, and indeed liberal conceptions of the world.”51 One example among many, as Choudry and Kapoor note, is the tendency of some international activists to frame advocacy for the rights and knowledge of indigenous peoples around the notions of market exchange and the concept of intellectual property rights.52
Activist–corporate partnerships, moreover, are now extending beyond certifying trade to depict shopping as an act of generosity and virtue. Products and deals come and go. Buy a Coke and “save” a polar bear, Coke and WWF have campaigned. Purchase a “Better World” scarf and donate half of the price-tag to charity, American Eagle Outfitters has told consumers. Purchase a bottle of Ethos water, Starbucks has promised customers, and give to the Ethos Water Fund to supply children in developing countries with clean water. Donate to the Make-a-Wish Foundation, BMW has advertised, by purchasing or leasing a BMW. One of the biggest cause–product successes of all, as Lisa Ann Richey and Stefano Ponte reveal in Brand Aid, has been the sale of RED products “fighting for an AIDS free generation.”53
The Irish musician Bono and the American attorney Bobby Shriver founded (PRODUCT) RED in 2006 to raise funds to prevent and treat HIV/AIDS in Africa. A private company, it licenses the RED logo to retailers. A portion of the profits from the sale of RED products goes to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Bobby Shriver does not hide the dual purpose of RED sales: to fight HIV/AIDS as well as to “buy a house in the Hamptons.”54
A host of retailers offer RED items. Apple asks consumers “to make a difference” and purchase a RED iPod Nano or a RED iPad Smart Cover. Nike calls on consumers “to join the movement” and buy RED shoelaces. Starbucks urges consumers to “help save lives” and buy a Starbucks RED Card. Many others offer RED products too, including Coca-Cola, Gap, Penguin Classics, Hallmark, American Express (UK), and Emporio Armani. Bono, speaking in 2006 at an Emporio Armani RED event, “One Night Only,” gave a playful, yet disturbing, take on the RED message:
You buy a RED product over here, the RED company buys life-saving drugs for someone who can’t afford them over there. That’s it. So why not shop ’til it stops? Why not try some off-the-rack-enlightenment? We can spend and destroy. We can wear our inside out. You will be a good-looking Samaritan because – and this is very good news for some of us – sinners make the best saints. That’s right.55
Unlike fair trade labeling or eco-certification, logos such as RED do not aim to improve the social or environmental practices of producers. Rather, the idea is to use the power of consumerism to finance a cause, leaving consumers guilt-free, even feeling honorable, when shopping. The more one buys, the more good one will do, turning capitalism into a dynamic solution for social ills.
Branding products with a “cause” helps firms to project a caring and conscientious image. This distracts critics. And it helps firms to retain societal and governmental support to operate – and thus sell more and grow even bigger. Being seen as responsible can be especially valuable for big business in turbulent economic times, such as since 2008. Not only does it help to diffuse acrimony and backlash, but it also fuels consumer demand (even potentially among those with declining personal incomes). “[I]nstead of mobilizing in response to economic crisis or engaging in some other form of citizen participation,” explain Richey and Ponte, “consumers may continue to try to change the world through shopping, with RED leading the revolution.”56
Self-indulgence, consumers are hearing time and again, is a reasonable way to support social justice and environmentalism, not to mention economic growth. Advertisers pioneered this idea. Now, though, activists and celebrities are just as vocal in relaying this message to consumers. Building a donation into a product purchase – what WWF describes as “cause marketing collaboration” – is a fast-emerging tool of NGO fundraising.57
Activist organizations are teaming up with big business in many other ways, too, wedding social and ecological goals to corporate profitability and market growth. For critics such as Greg Sharzer, author of No Local, co-branding and coadvertising are reinforcing international trade and markets, as well as shifting responsibility for social services and environmental management away from states and onto individuals. Asking consumers to act as “activists,” Sharzer argues, transfers “blame onto individual consumers for the failings of the system: if there’s alienation and environmental misery, it’s your fault for buying the wrong things.”58
Partnerships, capitalist philanthropy, and consumer activism all assume that NGOs can influence firms from inside capitalist institutions. These strategies presume that NGOs can do more good by raising more money. Through ethical purchasing, advocates imagine, citizens are able to “vote” for better companies. One underlying assumption, as Sharzer says, is that consumer demand, and “not exploitation,” sustains the world economy. Another is that pursuing self-interest can, and does, yield a common good. No one has expressed the reasoning here better than Adam Smith did in 1776: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.”59
Activists working inside a corporate frame end up making decisions – even moral ones – without ever really questioning the tenets of capitalism. For this reason, partnerships with big business, celebrity fundraising, and logos such as RED tend to do more to buoy up consumption than deliver appreciable social benefits. At the same time, consumer activism, comprising just a fraction of consumer expenditures worldwide, can end up satisfying the desire of hundreds of millions of good-intentioned people to try to make the world a better place in which to live. We should not overstate this point, however: millions of people are still speaking out and campaigning for more far-ranging political and economic change. But questioning the value of capitalism has never been easy – and doing so is getting ever harder as states step up surveillance and crack down on dissidents.