A Better Way to Buy One, Give One

The article A Better Way to Buy One, Give One written by Ashoka, a contributor group that focuses on bringing attention to pioneers of social change, discusses how the business strategy of TOMS Shoes, Inc., a show, and fashion brand, uses its status as a “change making brand” to boost their own sales. TOMS donates a pair of shoes for every shoe bought, in total giving away more than 10 million pairs of shoes and helping restore sight to more than 200,000 people with prescription glasses or underwriting surgery and other medical treatments. The overall idea is that companies cannot expect to just donate a good, but instead, to be non-profit, they must enact change for the solution to poverty, otherwise, they just hurt local businesses.

http://www.toms.com/

NYU economics professor Bill Easterly brings up the first critique of the model in saying that it ignores the real causes of poverty and doesn’t enact change, only puts a band-aid solution on the poverty issue in Africa, and even worse, it prevents local markets from acting naturally. To combat this, Toms shifted some manufacturing to Haiti to provide income via new jobs.

Not only has Toms helped provide millions of shoes, they inspired other companies to hop on the guy on give one model. TOMS helped the launch of Mealshare, a Canadian “buy one, give one” non-profit company that gives people the option to buy a meal for someone when they dine out. I buy myself dinner and a homeless man dinner. However, Mealshare is 100% non-profit, whereas TOMS makes a profit on its shoes. Mealshare doesn’t mark up the meals customers buy, and the customers don’t pay more than the price of the meals—none of the transportation costs or marketing, whereas TOMS customers fund the business. Mealshare charges an extra dollar on specific meals that goes to preparation of meals to homeless, retired, disabled, etc. often at halfway houses where they also receive other services like shelter and job consulting. Mealshare actively works to address the causes of homeless as well as feeding them, as well as partners with Save the Children, a non-profit helping educating children and providing school lunches in Mali—founder Hall says “.We’re not airlifting in food, dropping it on the ground and flying away. We’re trying to work directly with the community to improve quality of life. The ingredients that are used to provide those meals are sourced from local farmers, which is really exciting.” Compare this to TOMS who does just fly in shoes, the shoes being cheap and flimsy as well.