Buy Our Food Or The Starving Kid Gets It

Seriously, ConAgra Foods, who the hell do you think you’re kidding? This is a beautiful scam:

“When you activate your purchase and enter this code… a monetary donation will be made enabling one meal to be secured by Feeding America..” (emphasis mine)

Don’t get me wrong. It’s nice that your last year’s effort with Child Hunger Ends Here generated 2.5 million meals. I guess I’d be more impressed if that wasn’t also 2.5 million sales.

Donate the money, ConAgra. Sure, bask in the glow. Use it as a PR windfall.

But don’t expect us to pay for your charity. I think you can afford it a hell of a lot better than us.

Seriously. Your net profit for Q3FY2011 was over $215 million (beating projections, even though you made 14 million less than last year). I love this from the press release (read carefully, emphasis mine):

ConAgra Foods and the ConAgra Foods Foundation have also donated $35 million to Feeding America, including a recent five-year, $10 million pledge from the ConAgra Foods Foundation, the largest donation ever made to Feeding America specifically to fight child hunger.

Who knows over how long that 35 million has been donated? And that nice $35 million includes a pledge over the next five years. That’s only 2 million a year.

Sure, that’s a lot to you and I.

It’s one percent of ConAgra’s net income. And on top of that, it’s apparently contingent on you giving more money to them.

Again, donate the money, ConAgra. Sure, bask in the glow. Use it as a PR windfall.

But don’t expect us to pay for your charity.