There is a saying, attributed to American Indians: “When the last tree is cut down when the last river is poisoned, when the last bird is caught, — only then will you realize that money can’t eat.”
Thus, when we look at the approach to the business of individual companies, there is a feeling that they still expect to eat money in the future. And the sad events with the forests of Siberia, which according to the statements of security forces occurred as a result of illegal logging — another proof.
In Russia it is especially severely felt, in consequence grown the relationship to the business as something rigid, impersonal, focused solely on profit. On the one hand this perception contribute just a prejudice born at the junction of the Soviet attitude towards “bourgeois” flavour of the 90s, a young and unstable market model in Russia, as well as nagging eternally dissatisfied and resentful.
But this is partly to do with business created by its individual members who act in strict accordance with the postulate of Karl Marx: “at 300% of [profit] there is no such crime for which he [the capitalist] would not dare to go, at least under pain of the gallows.”
Now, imagine that these are all. That there will be a business that tries to do useful things, not Elon musk and his electric cars and charging stations, will not alternative energy sources, water filtration, waste recycling and waste production. Just turn on life on the principle “after us — the deluge”, have fun on the full and be in the desert by the end of this century.
Fortunately, a significant number of businessmen are, after cope with the basic task of ensuring profit for the company start to pay attention to social responsibility. So the business begins to enter a “white” schemes of taxes, formed a comfortable working environment for the staff, there is some kind of charity, and even participation in the life of the city and of the country by voluntary work, civic initiatives, and so on.
Here only there is a caveat: in our country social responsibility have recently started to monetize, trying to shove it is. Here begins care at the other extreme, when there is a social responsibility of business and individuals, which is not advertised that it was not regarded as a “soulless PR”.
In fact, both bad. If you do something good, you have to make it known, at least in order to set a good example to others. For work in the charity sector I know how it affects the business world, the stories that “But Vasily Petrovich last month gave 10 000 to the children’s home”. Immediately gets his friend Ivan Ivanovich and says he also wants 10 000 to give to the orphanage. And it’s not that they want to show off in front of each other (showing off those people with cars, watches and wives), and that “is so you!”. Especially when people realize what kind of money are we talking about, for many it is so amazing and unexpected that they already are eager to participate.
Therefore, to say that you need help. And in this article will talk about some examples of perfect, in my opinion, real balance and lighting.
A car dealer without cars
A few months ago I needed a car for larger events in Moscow — the awarding of the literary prize “New fiction” budding writers. It was only about 4 cars 2-3 days, and in my view it was quite simple and interesting collaboration.
Some brands rejected due to the fact that they already had scheduled events at this time. Pair of premium brands have decided that the format of the event they are not interesting. Neither the first nor the second neither the claims nor the issues of the responsible person looked at our proposal and made a decision.
Surprised only two dealership related brands Toyota and Lexus in Moscow, which refused even to consider proposals with the phrase “Oh, no, we don’t have vehicles for events.” It looked especially funny on the background of 8 standing in front of the dealership test-drabowsky machines only Lexus. It actually sounds as silly as the phrase of the seller “I don’t have time to sell cars”.
Well, okay, it’s up.
In the end we agreed with ROLF, the official dealer of ŠKODA. And what is interesting: their calving of marketing at first asked not about “what we get”. No, after learning that the event of social orientation is first asked “what cars need and what you need from us”. And when we agreed, clarified what bonuses will be on covering them as a premium partner.
That is typical — the dealer immediately posted news of the event on the website, sent a photographer to the event and after the awards ceremony sent out a press release focusing on the fact that ROLF ŠKODA has supported young writers.
Why is it good? Because in this case, the position of the company is to help, and then talk about it. And it’s really charity. I was not surprised, when at the salon I told the staff about the regular assistance to orphanages and the support of various charitable and socially-socially-important activities.
From ROLF is the desire to help, and when help happens, Yes, the officers involved is light. In my opinion this is the optimal approach to philanthropy. And I’m sure he is bearing fruit.
Anti oligarch
Only this year I learned about the big and major charity Fund Igor Rybakov and his wife Catherine. And on the one hand there is nothing unusual — almost every big businessman is some kind of charity. But this story is interesting because it’s real, because in this case the charity is not trying to appease society, “to kiss up” to the powers that be or to pay off higher powers for sin.
For the people that have a Fund to see very well! In the morning they sacrifice in front of the cameras 200, 000 to the orphanage in the evening depart for the weekend to ski, along with several models of paying for this vacation (excluding payment time models) $20 000.
Here everything is different, because every program of the Foundation oversees someone Rybakov: those that are more related to business and leadership oversees Igor, and those that are more focused on children and education — Catherine. If we add to this the statements of Igor in various interviews and see how much time he spends on charity, it becomes clear that in his case it really is the desire to give something to the world and to change their country for the better.
And if to continue the comparison, Ihor Rybakov is the opposite of the classic tycoon. Classic version — this is a man who very successfully privatized some of the extremely profitable assets in the country, and thus was able to get rich. Igor does not straddle a pipeline, and created a business from scratch, really earned his money, and now uses a significant part of the money and their time to make our country better.
Yes, you can say that Rybakov has a whole PR staff ers, Igor, and even your own YouTube channel, so it is not a model of discretion. Agree. And I don’t see anything wrong with that, because unlike the above example of the oligarch (of course, completely abstract), what it does far outweighs the number of PR that he gets.
“Conceited” fiction
How common stamp “glorified stars” I think to explain to anyone not required. Of course there’s no smoke without fire and conceited stars enough. Again, there in a creative environment people are heavy or unpleasant in nature.
But there are those who despite the nature or strange behavior, feel that same desire to give and bring it to life. There are many worthy examples of Chulpan Khamatova and Konstantin Khabensky, who sincerely and selflessly engaged in helping children.
However, I want to talk about some writers who choose to create and do the unthinkable! Create competitors, supporting aspiring writers in their genre and giving them a life of their own.
All different kind of competitions and clubs around the literature exist everywhere and in large numbers. However, watching the art world from within about 30 years, I can say that most of these places — parties “for their” and handing out prizes and awards on the principle of “one more friend”.
But of course there are exceptions, which will be considered further.
Yuri Nikitin Gaius Julius Orlovsky is one of the most published Soviet and Russian writers in the genres of science fiction and fantasy, constantly getting in his address, accusations and criticism from colleagues. It blamed the lack of literary education, then called Mercantile man who writes for money, but as soon as he fell, the circulation (and then declining sales were in the whole country, and not separately Nikitin), happily sugomori “Look he scribbled! Over Nikitin!”
Although not the most friendly environment, Yuri Nikitin felt the urge to help newcomers, and founded the “Club of fans of science fiction,” in which not only collected literary meetings, but also established the award “gold Cup” for aspiring authors. The prize was the Cup of pure gold, and publication in the proceedings. And as official data on the sponsors of the award, there is a view that prizes Nikitin paid for itself, just not advertising it.
And it’s funny that no fear of competition does not have. Writer in 2019 is 80 years old, and he still writes new books and publishes their numbers, which many Russian authors today do not even dreamed of.
There is a similar story in the United States — a traveler, writer and philosopher L. Ron Hubbard, by his own admission, until 1945, was a famous and rich man, who enjoyed life. He was one of the most famous writers of fiction in the United States, whose books were read by about 30 million Americans, Hollywood regularly turned to him for new scripts or for help in correcting already written. He was a member international of the explorers Club and led important expeditions, such as were testing a prototype of a navigation system, LORAN, which was later put on most of the ships in the world.
After the Second World war, where he commanded the anti-submarine ships and because of injuries was the reserve, he returned a hero, and… disabled. Wife, taking the baby, left him in search of a less problematic husband, but he was able to recover and return to work. Truth instead of fiction books he has written and published a book on self-help “Dianetics” – essentially an alternative take on the fashion at the time psychotherapy and psychoanalysis.
As soon as the book gained in popularity, Hubbard’s has hit the flow of bile and criticism from psychologists and psychotherapists. When criticism did not help, the move went outright slander and lies.
In General a quiet and comfortable life has ended and until 80-ies, Hubbard regularly received in his side attack from competitors, unhappy and crazy.
And although at that time, Hubbard was already wildly famous, had lots of money and several million followers of his philosophy, in 1983, together with his old friends such as ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov and Roger Zelazny, he organized a competition for new authors “Writers of the future” (Writers of the Future). The main prize was the gold pen in crystal, $5,000 and possible publication in the anthology contest.
Today, this competition continues to exist, and hundreds of people who have since become prize-winners or winners in it, got help in the start of a career. And although not all were the stars of this simple initiative has made their life better by allowing you to do what you love professionally. Literary criticism, by the way, also believe that the competition helped a lot of English-language fiction.
What?
I specifically cited various examples above: somewhere we are talking about millions allocated to very rich people, and then talk about a pretty simple support on mutually beneficial terms, or at all gratuitous contribution to the culture. All these stories have one thing in common — the desire to help others and the desire to give the outside more than they receive. And the realization that such people exist and that they exist in the same space is important.
Personally it gives me hope for the future, and keeps faith in people.
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