When I started Yale’s student EA group in 2014, we tried a bit of this (albeit with pharmacies, not grocery stores). IIRC, we got as far as a meeting with CVS’s head of corporate social responsibility (CSR), plus a few other conversations.
The companies we spoke to were choosing large, well-known charities. This was partly because of their branding (easier to pick up positive associations from charities people have actually heard of), partly because big charities tend to have highly appealing missions (e.g. St. Jude’s, which has used its “free care for children with cancer” pitch to become America’s fourth-largest charity), and partly (I’d guess) because the charities were easy to work with thanks to their size and staff capacity.
I also suspect, from these and other CSR-related interactions I’ve had, that changing a charity choice is hard once it’s been made. The professionals I meet tend to form relationships with the charities and staffers they work with, and it’s hard to tell someone you’ve fired them for a more effective charity (forgive the link, it was too easy a joke to make).
When I started Yale’s student EA group in 2014, we tried a bit of this (albeit with pharmacies, not grocery stores). IIRC, we got as far as a meeting with CVS’s head of corporate social responsibility (CSR), plus a few other conversations.
The companies we spoke to were choosing large, well-known charities. This was partly because of their branding (easier to pick up positive associations from charities people have actually heard of), partly because big charities tend to have highly appealing missions (e.g. St. Jude’s, which has used its “free care for children with cancer” pitch to become America’s fourth-largest charity), and partly (I’d guess) because the charities were easy to work with thanks to their size and staff capacity.
I also suspect, from these and other CSR-related interactions I’ve had, that changing a charity choice is hard once it’s been made. The professionals I meet tend to form relationships with the charities and staffers they work with, and it’s hard to tell someone you’ve fired them for a more effective charity (forgive the link, it was too easy a joke to make).