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Cynthia Magnus says she often finds clothes -- destroyed and discarded -- behind the H & M store on 34th Street in Manhattan, reports Jim Dwyer in the New York Times (1/6/10). She recently came across "about 20 bags filled with H & M clothing that had been cut up." Just to be sure the clothes couldn't be worn, "someone had slashed most of them with box cutters or razors." Cynthia went through it and was amazed by what she found.

"Gloves with the fingers cut off ... Warm socks. Cute patent leather Mary Jane school shoes, maybe for fourth-graders, with the instep cut up with a scissor. Men's jackets, slashed across the body and the arms. The puffy white fiber fill was coming out in white cotton." She also found bags filled with "sturdy plastic hangers." She took some of the bags, hoping to find someone who could repair the clothes, and kept the hangers for herself.

"A girl can never have enough hangers," says Cynthia. She's also written a letter to H & M's head of corporate responsibility, Ingrid Schullstorm, volunteering "to help H & M connect with a charity that could put the unsold items to better use than simply tossing them in the trash." As it happens, there's a "big collection point for New York Cares, which conducts an annual coat drive" just around the corner from the H & M store. Within a couple of days, H & M agreed to donate discarded clothes to charity.

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Over the past three years, a pair of fifty-something amateur musicians have staged 11 benefit concerts, raising $300,000 for local charities, reports Jan Ellen Spiegel in the New York Times (9/6/09). "This is not an original idea," says Jerry Vigorito, 51. "Bob Geldof did it back in the day, you know? We're just using local musicians to raise funds for local charities." Rob Fried, 50, says it's all about giving back: "You get to a certain age where you've taken care of your family, you've had your first foray in your career and you start to look outside, and you wake up to your community and the world."

Jerry and Rob, who have been playing together since their high school days in Fairfield, Connecticut, have recruited a rotating lineup of some 80 musicians for the group, which they call "Band Together." Their first show benefitted Habitat for Humanity's Youth Project House, and was held at a 120-seat venue they had rented for $100. Their most recent event was decidedly more upscale, at the Quick Center for the Arts at Fairfield University. But Jerry says he and Rob are careful to maintain a homespun sensibility: "Each move that we make is very well thought out, without losing our roots and our core," he says.

The Quick Center show benefitted the local Red Cross and the Connecticut Burns Care Foundation's Children's Burn Camp. Frank Szivos of the foundation says Band Together has raised $25,000 for the charity in two shows. Jerry and Rob, who also "continue to play with bands for pay," say they have a waiting list of musicians who want to participate. "We can all go out and play benefits -- that's no big deal," says Jay Stollman, a Band Together member. "It's the energy these guys have created." Band Together's most recent event included Joe Bouchard, formerly of Blue Oyster Cult, and benefitted Pilot House, which helps children with special needs.

Norman Lear didn't exactly see dollar signs when he first heard a bunch of pop-music chestnuts sung by a group called Playing for Change, reports Mark Guarino in the Christian Science Monitor (9/21/09). "There's no young person or big stars, the songs you've heard before," says Norman, who these days runs Concord Music Group, a record label. "So I didn't look at it and say, 'there's a big buck to be made.' I thought, 'this can be very good for our label because it's so good and so healthy and so deeply touching.'"

That's exactly what Mark Johnson, a recording engineer had in mind. Over a period of about four years, he traveled to 15 countries with his recording equipment in tow. He visited "South Africa, Ghana, India, Nepal, the Middle East, Russia, Brazil and Ireland," and recorded local "instrumentalists, vocalists, choral groups, youth choirs and subway performers, each contributing individual parts to familiar songs by Bob Marley, Sam Cooke, Peter Gabriel, and others. The result was both a CD and DVD -- and a YouTube hit video of "Stand By Me," the "Ben E. King chestnut from 1961." (video)

Mark says his idea was to "show all different cultures and races and political points of view coming together to do something positive." All of the recordings were done "outdoors to capture the environment of each particular location," and "each musician wore headphones, which ... allowed them to contribute their parts in accordance with what was needed." The CD and DVD were distributed through Starbucks and now a tour is planned, featuring "a band of 10 musicians from the recordings, many of whom don't speak the same language, just music."

A small, used bookstore is blaming Oxfam, the anti-poverty organization, for running it out of business, reports Michael Kimmelman in the New York Times (9/3/09). Marc Harrison says he had to close his shop, Elwood Books, because he just couldn't compete after Oxfam opened a secondhand bookshop in his Salisbury, England, neighborhood. The shop "is one of 130 Oxfam secondhand bookstores (link) now operating around the country," generating some $32 million a year in funds used to fight poverty and famine, provide emergency relief, combat climate change and discrimination. But as Marc sees it, Oxfam is "destroying lives here to save them elsewhere."

That's because "Oxfam, as a charity, gets its inventory free. Its shops are staffed largely by volunteers. It enjoys generous tax benefits. With nearly $500 million in British government support it can afford not just the higher rents on busier thoroughfares where most people shop, but also the costs of fancy remodeling ...They're bright, white, sleek and inviting places, branded advertisements, except not for some megabucks chain store but for a charity." Unlike Marc's store, which is all about "unearthing and selling odd and special volumes," Oxfam specializes in recycling "the same popular paperbacks."

On the one hand Oxfam's approach flies in the face of Marc's ideal of a secondhand bookshop, but most of all it offends his sense of fair play. Oxfam's David McCullough disagrees, saying that "if someone's business model is so marginal that an Oxfam shop opening nearby decimates it, then we are not the problem." In fact, Marc's enterprise hasn't been decimated; it still operates online. The real issue, he admits, is that more people like the idea of a secondhand bookshop than actually like to shop them. "I've had loads of people coming to tell me it's such a tragedy I closed," he says. "If only they'd bought books."

"It's more efficient speaking about people's values instead of gadgets," says Fiat's Olivier Francois, as quoted by Aaron O. Patrick in the Wall Street Journal (1/26/09). Olivier is explaining the thinking behind a new public-service announcement on behalf of imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi "that doubles as an ad for Fiat's Lancia Delta car." In addition to low production costs (U.S. $78,000) the spot is being run for free, as a public-service announcement" by "networks in nine European countries, including Italy, France and Germany."

Suu Kyi won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, but because she leads "the opposition to Myanmar's repressive military junta ... has spent about 12 years under house arrest in Myanmar." Fiat, as sponsor of the Ninth World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates, arranged to film four other Nobel Laureates, including former Polish leader Lech Walesa, arriving at the event in black Lancia Deltas, as former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev looks on. A fifth car -- a white car -- pulls up, but when the door opens the seat is revealed as empty, in honor of Suu Kyi's absence (video here).

Fiat worked under certain limitations, in that it could only film the arrivals, not stage them. Some of the television stations say their airing of the spot was not exactly free, that it was part of their "general advertising agreement with Fiat," or a "little Christmas gift" for the automaker, which is "a big advertiser." Opinions are split on the ethics of this approach. Michael Boylan, a philosophy professor and co-author of Advertising Ethics, thinks it isn't because Fiat isn't offering Suu Kyi any direct help. However, Tony Pigott of Ethos JWT, "says the ad is well made and unobjectionable." ~ Tim Manners, editor.

A new book takes on Bill Gates's idea that corporations should do more to help solve society's problems, writes Leslie Lenkowsky in the Wall Street Journal (1/2/09). The book, "Creative Capitalism," is actually an edited collection of blog posts by "a distinguished group of economists, journalists and executives of nonprofit organizations," edited by Michael Kinsley. Some of the experts contend that philanthropy and business are mutually exclusive. Among them is Lawrence Summers, former Harvard guy, Treasury Secretary, and the incoming head of the National Economic Council.

"It is hard in this world to do well," says Larry. "It is hard to do good. When I hear a claim that an institution is going to do both, I reach for my wallet. You should too." He cites Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- the attempt to create affordable housing via "government-created corporations" -- as supporting evidence. U.S. District Judge Richard Posner meanwhile points out that if solving social problems were profitable, corporations would have been doing it all along. And Steven Landsburg, an economist, says corporations that sacrifice "profit to accomplish philanthropic goals end up betraying their shareholders."

Their perspectives aren't new -- Milton Friedman railed against "corporate social responsibility" (CSR) back in 1970 (link). David Vogel, a business professor, takes a somewhat softer line, noting that CSR does help improve corporate images, which may be beneficial, if not exactly profitable. However, Ed Glaeser, a Harvard economist, notes that there are profits to be had "in poorer countries, not least where failed governments are incapable of providing public services." He also suggests that there may be innovations to be realized and competitive advantages to be had when companies make an effort "to balance good with doing well." ~ Tim Manners, editor