I’d be annoyed. Does any of the money go to causes I disagree with? I don’t want to know that Jane in accounting is giving her money away to an anti-abortion group. I don’t want to know that Jim in sales gave his away to an ultra conservative church.
I have a quibble with the thread title*: the bank’s actions do not exemplify “paying it forward.” “Pay it forward” is an attitude of responding to kindness by demonstrating kindness to a person from whom you did not receivce the kindness.
An example would be the guy in the sports car who stopped on a mountain road alongside my family’s station wagon in 1963 and offered to get us water for our overheated engine. When he returned, he apologized for taking so long, but he had stopped to help a lady change her flat tire. When my dad offered to pay him for his time, trouble, or gas, he waved off the money telling Dad to help out someone else as repayment, noting that he was already a couple of good deeds in the hole for the week for nice things done for him.
The bank’s gesture is a “nice” stunt, but it is not “paying forward.”
- I realize that the title came from the several news reports circulating about the bank, but it is still inaccurate.
If it was reported as income and I am paying taxes on it I am going to spend it however I like.
Bumfights: Christmas Edition
Sponsored by: State Bank & Trust
This does seem to be a pretty crappy thing to do to the employees.
I would be pissed. For one I don’t want to be part of any news story so you can cram the camera. Banks do not tend to pay well except at the higher end of the corporate ladder. Seems like they used to give Christmas bonuses. If I was expecting a Christmas bonus to help buy presents for my kids I would be furious. And I wouldn’t work for that company for very long.
Besides this is just something that Oprah did about a year ago.
This is bullshit.
I am a big fan of the idea of “Pay it forward” because I feel that it starts a chain-reaction of good. Sort of like karma working the way it should. For example. yesterday I got a tip for fixing a computer. That night I ordered in, and gave an extra-big tip to the delivery boy. And I am still ahead, because I still have money left.
This is just horseshit. It’s worse than saying, “blah blah has been donated in your name to the Human Fund” because it’s actually making you do the work with money that isn’t even yours. The video proof is just insulting. I would refuse to do it, personally.
Why couldn’t I document the good deed with a receipt from, say, The Salvation Army or the Humane Society?
What does the bank want with the video tape?
With the “you have to videotape yourself doing it” rule - stupid, crass, tacky stunt.
If they had just said “instead of direct corporate giving, we’re trusting our employees to give money to worthy causes and giving them the means to do so” and used the funds that the company usually uses for corporate giving, that would have been kind of cool.
But in lieu of normally given Christmas bonuses? That kind of sucks.
So what are the details to this whole plan?
I mean, is the $1,000/$500 listed as income on each employee’s W2? If so, the employee earns a tax liability that is only (partially) offset by a tax deduction if they can provide the charitable contribution was made. And with charitable deductions requiring paperwork (receipts) above certain limits, it appears the ultimate tax liability is pawned off by the company on its unsuspecting employees.
For me, it’s similar to the “… for every bottle cap you send us, we’ll donate 50 cents to the XYZ charity, up to $1 million …” The company gets the tax writeoff, more profits because consumers buy more of the product just to send in the bottle caps (at their expense!) and we’re all made to feel good about it. Send your own fifty cents to the charity and take your own tax deduction.
After all, no good deed goes unpunished! 
And as already mentioned, whose video camera, especially if the employee doesn’t own one?
You can get a life membership in NAMBLA for $1000.
Oh, man, now I know what I’d do if my employer pulled a publicity stunt this lame (and I already had another job lined up somewhere else)…
I don’t see anything wrong with this program, provided it is strictly voluntary. Otherwise it is forcing the employees to participate in a PR scheme on their own time.
I’d donate my money as a merit based cash scholarship to underprivileged college students. If you happen to be wondering what that is, it would be tips to strippers who do a good enough job. 
If you want to help what I’d like to become a full time career please support the Candi Summers Foundation.
It doesn’t exist yet but I’ll take early donations, I’m just working on some legal issues
I think it can be considered “paying it forward” because someone did something nice for you. It may be a loose definition of the term, but it works for these purposes.
I don’t have a problem with it. I don’t care how others spend their charitable dollars as long as they don’t give me a hard time about mine.
As far as the video tape goes, it wasn’t required, but I can see how viewing others’ charities might give people better ideas on how to spend their donation money…maybe next year. I also think seeing others do it can be contagious…and there’s nothing wrong with that.
From the very first sentence, which is quoted in the OP, you can see that this is a voluntary program. They will give the employee the money on the condition that they donate it. If they don’t want to donate, they don’t take the money. Nothing is said about the tax consequences but I assume that they will get bank money to be used, not a check in their name. Also, the name “Pay It Forward” is what the bank is calling the program, inaccurate though it may be.
Anyway, to answer the OP, I think that it is both a nice gesture as well as a stupid stunt. It is, however, just the kind of thing that a lot of employees would go gaga over. I sure as hell wouldn’t participate but a lot of my co-workers would love to do so. Meh. It’s no different than the Holiday Party. It’s good for morale for some and a neutral for those of us who don’t give a crap.
That’s why I’d start the “Buy the employees a video camera” fund…starting with myself…so I could video tape myself making the donation. Yeah that’s the ticket.
I admit curiousity; what part of the sentences quoted in the OP sounded optional to you? Was it the part where they say “is giving” as opposed to “is offering”?
When they say “each full-time employee will receive $1,000 and each part-time employee will receive $500,”, how does that usage of the word “will” differ from “Trespassers will be prosecuted”? Does that imply that prosecution can be dismissed at the discretion of the trespasser?
I’m sure it is optional, but how does one infer that from the quoted text?
But how do you videotape yourself buying the camera, if you didn’t have a camera until you bought it?
I looked at some of the comments under the story and two people who claimed to be employees of the bank posted that the money they were to use charitably was in addition to their normal bonus, and also that the bank had given each of them a video camera to tape the donation and then to keep for their own use.
That makes the story a bit more palatable, but I think that people in Fargo will be seeing lots of these taped donations on the bank’s commercials over the next few years. Big savings in advertising.
I would decline.
I don’t feel that the act described would be charity, and agree entirely with Seige that celebrating charity is bad for you. I also doubt that the bank would be willing to actually pay it forward, and just give things to folks who no one will ever hear about.
Social engineering by tax deduction is political way to make wealthy interests support the needs of the society. Charity that gets you a tax deduction is commerce, not charity. Not bad, really, nor even bad policy, but not the same spiritual object as true charity. You have to not tell anyone. It’s an important element of charity. If you do it for the good feeling, or the good reputation, or the public honors, then those are what you get from it. Making the world better happens when you be the thing you want the world to become.
TrisIt was actually the second sentence that let me to believe that it was optional so I overstated it slightly. The first sentence says that it is giving them the money. The second one says that it has conditions. Don’t do the condition and you decline the money.