Home Depot is giving $500,000 each to Charleston, SC and Fayetteville, AR as part of its Sustainable Cities Program. See details here.
Through its Sustainable Cities Institute
program, the foundation will award $500,000 each and a full-time
coordinator to Charleston, South Carolina, and Fayetteville, Arkansas,
to implement “sticks and bricks” projects that yield immediate cost
savings for the cities and their residents and can be replicated in
other communities. The results of the program will be shared on a
weekly basis on the institute’s Web site.
Two thoughts come to mind:
Is this the best use of stockholder’s money? As Milton Friedman once said about social responsibility:
There is one and only one social responsibility of business-to use its
resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so
long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages
in open and free competition without deception or fraud.
On the other hand, maybe this is not “social responsibility.” Maybe Home Depot recognizes that cities, especially “progressive” cities like Charleston and Fayetteville, make life and death decisions about whether a big box store can be built in their cities. Thus, this program can be viewed as a bribe required by “progressive” cities before they will accept big box stores.
