Quality-of-Life Researcher Proposes New Capitalism to Battle Corporations and Increase Funding for Important Causes

Empire State College affiliated researcher, George Ortega, is proposing a new capitalist system called Profit-Donation Capitalism that encourages "Profit-Donating Businesses," to compete with conventional corporations for available consumer dollars by marketing products that raise additional funds for causes like poverty reduction, and medical research.

(PRWEB) July 11, 2005 -- To boost funding for important popular causes like ending poverty and environmental protection, George Ortega, a quality-of-life researcher affiliated with the State University of New York’s Empire State College, has proposed a bold new free-market capitalism that transforms consumers’ routine shopping into cause-funding opportunities.

Ortega’s “Profit-Donation Capitalism,” (PDC), restructures today’s free-market capitalism through an extensive network of “Profit-Donating Businesses” (PDBs) that compete with conventional corporations for consumer dollars by selling products whose profit funds causes like medical research, education and poverty relief.

Over fifty PDBs run by individuals and non-profit organizations are listed and described on a PDC website, profitdonationcapitalism.org, that Ortega made public recently. These PDBs compete with conventional corporations for consumer dollars by marketing “equal value” products, and donating their entire profit to numerous causes.

How can companies stay in business, and thrive, while giving their entire profit away? Explaining this revolutionary concept by example, Ortega’s website provides detailed information on over fifty PDBs like The Army and Air Force Service Exchange (AAFSE), who donates the over $200 million it earns yearly from product sales to military personnel with special needs.

Better known PDBs also described include The United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF). They earn $130 million yearly and, since 1949, have used their over one billion dollars profit from greeting card sales to fund children’s programs world-wide. Actor Paul Newman’s company, Newman’s Own, founded in 1982, markets over forty food products now sold in supermarkets throughout the world, and has donated its entire $150 million in after-tax sales revenues to thousands of causes.

“Many people do not support important causes like poverty reduction, medical research, education, and the environment because of limited funds,” says Ortega. “Profit-Donating Businesses,” he explains, “empower these individuals to support causes simply by purchasing products from PDBs rather than from conventional businesses.”

Some PDBs are unabashedly political. For example, telephone and Internet service provider Freedom Telecom, founded in 2001 by Joseph and Jane Dalton, expects to have over one million customers by 2008, and generate $74 million each year for Pro-Life lobbying efforts. Pura Vida Coffee, a PDB founded in 1997 by Harvard graduates Christopher Dearly and John Sage to earn funding for disaster relief, ambitiously promotes the PDC concept through lectures, and makes their business model available for free to anyone wishing to create a profit-donating business.

According to Ortega, “When shoppers are given the choice between buying a product from a company whose profit enriches owners and stockholders, and buying an “equal value” product from a Profit-Donating Business whose revenue is donated to an important cause, they overwhelmingly prefer to patronize the PDB.” Ortega says that the Profit-Donation Capitalism model is expanding and offering consumers more “cause-supporting” products each year.

# # #