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Life Lessons
It’s Still Bullying and Coercion Even If It’s For a Good Cause
But look how well it works!
In the early 1980s, I worked for a large corporate entity whose management supported United Way. The company urged employees to sign up to have donations to that organization deducted from their paychecks. They held a mandatory meeting to pitch this program. Each department head had a goal to meet.
The CEO and other top executives gave speeches about the worthiness of this charity which distributes donations among numerous smaller non-profit organizations (at the time, the Boy Scouts of America was among them).
Don’t rock the boat
During the Q&A portion of the meeting, someone asked if we could direct our donations, singling out or excluding an organization, to align their donation more closely to their particular values. Although this was an option, the United Way representative strongly discouraged it. Instead, the message was clear, “Trust us to do the right thing.”
At the end of the meeting, they handed us payroll deduction forms which we filled out and returned as we exited the room. The United Way representative instructed us to deposit our completed, unsealed forms in a stack on a table, directly under the noses and in full…
