When executives at Best Buy Canada Ltd. considered how to help victims of the devastating tsunamis in Asia, they wanted to do something that involved their customers but did not make the company look opportunistic.
"It's a very fine line," said Lori DeCou, a spokeswoman for the 144-store chain, which includes Future Shop outlets.
Corporations across Canada and the United States have rushed to join what has become a flood of donations to the tsunami stricken countries.
Some airlines are offering free travel for relief workers, other companies are sending water or drugs, while many more are making donations to aid agencies.
More Report on Business Stories
The Burnaby, B.C.-based company decided to make a $50,000 donation to the Canadian Red Cross.
It is also encouraging customers to come into one of its stores and make a donation, which the company will match up to an additional $50,000. Ms. DeCou acknowledged that some people might view the campaign as a crass way of attracting customers, but she said the firms is genuinely trying to help.
"I hope what people remember about this from our perspective is it came from a place of wanting to do the right thing to support the people who work for our company, and the customers that we have, who have now been personally touched by this," she said.
Canada's banks are donating between $75,000 and $100,000 each, Inco Ltd. and its Indonesian subsidiary are contributing $540,000 (U.S.) and Canada Safeway Ltd. announced yesterday that its 212 stores will collect donations for the Red Cross.
The Red Cross is still counting up all the giving but as of yesterday Canadians had donated about $14-million (Canadian) to the agency.
For companies, deciding how much to give and how to publicize the donation can raise tricky issues, especially in light of the bad publicity the business world has faced in recent years, says Larry Smith, a consultant at the Institute for Crisis Management in Louisville, Ky.
"I'm sure that a lot of people have become quite cynical and I wouldn't be surprised if there aren't some folks that would look at some of these press releases and announcements that are going around and ask themselves: 'What are they really up to?,' " Mr. Smith said. "The public in Canada and around the world mostly sees and reads about all the bad things that go on in the world and never get to see the companies that do things right and that have a moral and social conscience."
Mr. Smith said most companies have been genuinely touched by the disaster and are trying to do the right thing. "Very likely they are up to exactly what they say they are, trying to be helpful. But it's got to be done tastefully."
For many companies the amount of the donation is arbitrary and some are hard pressed to explain how they came up with the amount.
For example, Sun Life Financial Inc. is donating $100,000 to the Canadian Red Cross. That figure is based in part on a donation the insurer made years ago to help victims of a disaster in India, said company spokesman Nicholas Thomas. That donation was around $50,000, he said, so the company simply doubled it for this much larger catastrophe (Sun Life is also donating one day's pay for each of its employees in India. The company has about 1,000 employees and 11,000 agents in India).
Mr. Thomas said the $100,000 is also proportionate to what many U.S. firms are donating. "In the U.S., some companies are donating $1-million or $2-million," he said. "You could probably say they are 10 times bigger than we are, so a $1-million donation in the States is $100,000 here."
Canada's major banks are making contributions in varying size. Royal Bank of Canada and Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce are each donating $100,000 to the Red Cross. By contrast, Bank of Montreal and Bank of Nova Scotia are giving $75,000 each.
"You just try to give a significant amount and then sort of see where things go from there," said Frank Switzer, a spokesman for Scotiabank. He added that the Red Cross is the preferred agency for the bank, and other companies, mainly because it is national and familiar to most Canadians.
JoAnne Hayes, a spokeswoman for BMO, said the bank's donation is the first time it has made an overseas gift. "Up until this point, we have only supported relief efforts where our employees live and work, basically within North America," she said. Ms. Hayes said she was not sure how the figure was calculated, "but I know a lot of thought was given to this because it was the first time we were doing so."
Rob McLeod, a spokesman for CIBC, said the bank "wanted to make a significant contribution."
Yesterday, TSX Group Inc. announced it has given $20,000 to the Red Cross. When asked if that amount might appear low in contrast to other companies, TSX spokesman Steve Kee replied: "I think it's a petty point. We are making a donation based on the size of our company."
20