What happens when you donate to a charity at a store checkout?

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I’ve seen large corporations brag about donating large sums of money to charity.

Are donations collected at checkout (E.G Checking out at Publix and the cashier asks “Would you like to donate to cancer research?”) included in those sums?

Are donations collected used for tax benefits of the corporation?

In: Economics

17 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

So caveat that this was years ago, but I had a friend who managed a big supermarket and he said it was legit…kinda. If spent the $10, they would indeed spend the $10 on food.

The caveat was, the charity was run or beholden to the parent company of the store somehow. So, they’d buy a set $10 bag to donate to a local food bank…..made up of the highest profit margin items the store could cram into it. He said it *was* essentially like buying $10 worth of food and donating it to a local food bank, provided you just *coincidentally* bought some of the most profitable non-perishable items in the store.

If you’re going to give cash, for the love of God give it directly to the food bank. They get *almost nothing* in cash, and most of them have relationships with distributors to get *insane* deals on stuff that isn’t moving. They’ll get exactly what they need and way more of it if you just give to them directly.

[Edit]
Sounds like this is asking more about pass through cash donations? And it looks like that’s pretty well answered.

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