Appealing to people’s sense of charity is hard, and not sustainable. That’s why you need constant fund raisers: people’s desire to help fizzles out over time. Hot issues become cold. People move on to the next tragedy.

Appealing to people’s sense of greed is natural and sustainable. If a company can profit, it will continue to sell. If it can profit more by donating to charity, it will continue to donate to charity.

What these countries need is recurring aid they can count on, not a one-time donation. Realistically, starbucks raising their prices by 10% and giving 5% to charity is going to have a longer lasting benefit than a single fund raiser that donates 100% of its proceeds to charity.

I think in this case, the ends justify the means. It would feel warmer and fuzzier if their donations were more substantial, but even if they donated 100% of the profit from the water to their cause, people would still say that it was just Starbucks running a PR campaign to make themselves look better. They’d still be vilified for being a giant corporation.

Besides, the root of the problem is the consumer, not the corporation. You can’t get people to donate $.10 to charity, but they don’t think twice buying a bottle of water with an $.80 markup on it. Starbucks is simply helping people already do what they’re going to do: make themselves feel like they’re helping while essentially doing nothing.