http://www.bustedtees.com/tumblrjapan

It comes up advertised on everyones tumblr because everyone has to follow the staff

I don’t quite understand the big companies doing things – like this specific design – its wearability is limited. I mean I can’t imagine who will be wearing this shirt 6 months from now, much less a year or two. (Maybe I’m wrong, because I don’t ‘get’ Ralph Lauren style anyway, or the people who spend that much on polo shirts.) Why not just make 1 day where every polo shirt sold at an actual RL store will, in part, benefit the relief efforts? Why force people to buy something that they don’t really plan to wear long-term? That’s like saying we’ll donate the proceeds of all movie tickets bought this weekend, but you have to sit quietly and actually watch (without a bathroom break) a triple feature of terrible movies like “Because I Said So”, “Event Horizon” and whatever your least favorite movie ever was. Sure, some people would actually go and do it, because they want to get something in exchange for their donation, but it severely limits the amount of participants.

Most people who make anonymous donations give small sums of discretionary income, time, or donations-in-kind. That’s because most people have little discretionary income, little free time, and few resources beyond what they think they need.

Not every little bit helps, but they do add up. The unemployed person who saves $2 a day while looking for work because he gets bus transfer tickets from other passengers can get a few extra meals a week.

It is not acceptable to brag about donating to a charity.

How do you let somebody tell others of their donation without bragging? Send them something that they can wear, display around the house, or otherwise use to subtly identify themselves as a donor.

It is important that the product not have significant perceived intrinsic value: Pink tourmaline for breast cancer awareness would be gauche, and auctioning off a black diamond for colon cancer research ironic and satirical, but not particularly effective*.

*Effective at raising money; the effectiveness of money at reducing cancer is a different subject.

We are prepared to sacrifice in proportion to the perceived closeness of our relationship. This perception happens, I believe, before reason, instantaneously. We often feel empathy for other species, even inanimate objects. However, this tendency to overempathize creates a likelihood that we will help other people without concern for our own benefit.

In the end, it is “a return” of a sort, however I don’t believe that at bottom we are built for transactional relationships. It may be true that many people have suppressed the evolved desire to help others in need, and replaced it with some sort of rational misdirection, but that is not the default, as anyone with a pet dog will notice.

Agreed, though, that ‘100% of proceeds’ could mean anything at all.