Since December, over 12,000 people  have signed an online petition to urge Steve Jobs to change Apple's unfriendly  iPhone donation policy.   Yesterday,  Vincent Stehle, in his column in the Chronicle of Philanthropy took Apple to task for its poor corporate citizen record, compared to the generosity of its competitors like Google, Microsoft,  Adobe, and others.   On the other side of the Atlantic,  Nick Hurd,  Civil Society Minister in the UK, has announced that he will write Apple to encourage … [Read more...]

Update: Apple made an official statement about why the pulled the app and appears to put the donation policy out of the picture.   So far, no official word from Apple on the iPhone app donation issue. Today, the Guardian Technology blog speculated that the reason why the Wikileaks iPhone app was pulled from the iTunes store was because the $1.95 fee for the app was a donation to the organization. Let's unpack this .... This is a nuanced issue.  No doubt about it.  The online petition with over … [Read more...]

You might have read this article in the New York Times this month about how Apple makes it really difficult for nonprofits to collect donations from within iPhone apps and the ensuring kerfulffle from many in the nonprofit and CSR sector, including the Chronicle of Philanthropy, Nonprofit Quarterly, Cause Marketing Forum, and Foundation Center.     But the outcry was not limited to the social sector industry in US, we also heard complaints from Australia, UK, and  Canada.  It has also been … [Read more...]

Apple makes it really difficult for nonprofits to collect donations from within iPhone apps and we all want them to get it right.    As the Chronicle of Philanthropy and Nonprofit Quarterly reported last week, Apple’s policy has raised the ire of some nonprofits leaders.   We've started an online petition at Care2 and it has almost  6,000 signatures collected so far sending Mr. Jobs at Apple a message. Alyson Kapin over at Froggy Loop Blog wrote a post,  "Tell Steve Jobs: Don't Be A Bad Apple" … [Read more...]

I've been complaining about Apple's anti-charity approach, but for this post I want to share an example about how one company is encouraging acts of kindness and charity during the holiday season.   It comes from Apple's  Silicon Valley neighbor, Yahoo.  The program is called How Good Grows, a holiday event that is part of Yahoo's CSR program. The idea is simple.   They want to encourage and highlight small acts of kindness that can trigger big ripples and at the same time drive awareness and … [Read more...]