Apple & Charitable Giving: A New Era Under Cook
Under previous CEO Steve Jobs, Apple did not have a strong orientation towards corporate philanthropy. Jobs believed that societal change and improvement would be achieved through innovative design, rather than philanthropy. After the appointment of the new (current) CEO Tim Cook in 2011, Apple has integrated charity more strongly into some of its business activities. This may reflect a new top-down company philosophy regarding the importance/impact of charitable giving, but may in part also be an attempt to combat negative PR generated by it’s perceived reputation as a non-charitable company.
Under Cook, Apple shot from Unlisted to Eighth position in the Top Ten S&P Companies for charitable giving. In previous years, Apple did not report their levels of charitable giving and so could not be ranked in positive PR-generating features such as Forbes’ Annual “America's Most Generous Companies”. Under Cook, a rash of new initiatives were introduced, including renewed interest in the Product(RED) partnership, and options for employees to donate their labour in volunteering efforts.
Where Jobs was a focussed purist, aggressively pursuing design excellence and doing one thing excellently, Cook appears far more interested in building lifestyle factors into Apple products and Apple thinking. Whereas Jobs famously was sceptical of games, now the App Store has a fully dedicated game section separate from all other apps, and games highlighted daily in the new and notable "Today" landing page. With technology integrated into the lives of consumers, Cook's vision seems far more about supporting people in the lives they already live, rather than Job's more evangelical approach of converting people to the Apple way of thinking about design and productivity. And "supporting people in the lives they already live" for the majority of Americans, includes a comparatively large amount of charitable volunteering, and charitable giving.
Critics and commentators might argue that Apple’s charity efforts are, for the most part, strategically motivated “quick wins” with high-profile campaigns, rather than an indication of a more integrated commitment to philanthropy. Others might argue that, as branding is an essential aspect to Apple’s ability to do business, it is prudent to steer carefully of throwing Apple’s tremendous economic clout behind initiatives that they themselves do not control, for fear of unintended repercussions.
An important factor to consider is that dilution of the “design purity & perfection” reputation and aesthetic which attracts many customers to Apple products. Fogging the public perception of Apple as a company which ruthlessly pursues design perfectionism and ease of user experience to the expense of all else could be damaging to Apple’s reputation and command of the marketplace. Charity is not slick, simple or easily branded, and Apple’s vision does not easily tolerate any issue which could be politically divisive to it’s widely targeted multi-demographic, international customer base. Large, single-issue campaigns are easier to steer and retain oversight of. Apple has historically strongly preferred to offer it’s customers centrally designed Solutions, rather than individual Choices, but in recent years this has started to change. ApplePay is neither revolutionary or beautiful from a customer point of view, it is simply another way to pay. And it is hard to image Jobs signing off on the new Memoji feature - a pure entertainment product that has no real practical application and deliberately permits non-aesthetic choices. Under Cook, these playful digital products sit alongside news items about a new Earth Day trade-in donation scheme, and a notification that Apple is now powered by 100% renewable energy, with three "good cause" articles on the bounce in the NewsRoom news feed (1, 2, 3.) The scope of Apple's work has widened considerably since Job's day.
“Our goals are very simple — to design and make better products. If we can’t make something that is better, we won’t do it.”
Charitable efforts have made an appearance in Apple products via (and possibly as a method of promoting and legitimising) Apple Pay. A carefully curated selection of charity partners were selected for the scheme. Partners in the UK included ActionAid UK, Alzheimer’s Society, Barnardo’s, British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK, Comic Relief, Concern Worldwide (UK), DEC, Marie Curie, Oxfam, (RED), RNIB, RNLI, RSPB, RSPCA, Scope, Sightsavers, The Royal British Legion, Unicef UK, VSO, WaterAid, and WWF-UK. By including charitable donations into a service designed for/associated with commerce, Apple has allowed customers to make more individualised choices, without affiliating the company as a whole with any particular charitable organisation.
“Until then Apple had maintained a policy of not permitting seamless donations to charities within apps on its App store. Donations were only possible if one left the app to make a text donation or donate by opening a web browser.”
Overall, Apple’s historically reluctant approach to charitable giving seems to be in line with their overall competency policy of refusing to engage in activities in which they cannot dominantly excel. The GivABit case study alludes to Apple’s concern with reputation protection and damage control, including concerns about fraudulent transactions. There is also a lack of business incentive to allow partners to circumvent Apple’s 30% transaction cut on IAP (In-App Purchases): “any in-app transaction via iTunes would entitle Apple to 30% of that transaction — presumably charity donations included. Given the fact that we thought 30% was way too much to take from a $1 donation to charity, we had to come up with a different solution…” ApplePay donations do not entitle Apple to a 30% cut, but they retain a 0.15% cut (USA only, UK less) of every transaction, regardless of what it is for. This is reclaimed from the bank, allowing Apple to claim that “Apple doesn't charge any additional fees” [to the customer] for use of the ApplePay service.
Unlike comparable American firms, Apple does not invest significant sums in lobbying for it’s own interests. Apple does not seem comfortable with “effort” – promote, try, lobby, campaign, promote, encourage - but rather “accomplishment;” Apple does not engage in activism not within it’s own power to succeed at. Apple is very much a company about Getting Stuff Done, and under Cook, the scope of this has been dramatically expanded from Job's original focus of getting people to use computers more intuitively. Like Amazon, the company's remit now covers every part of human experience. It is no longer about improving productivity, it's about changing the nature of work. It is no longer about getting more people to buy books, it's about completely revitalising what a book even is. Under Jobs, no design constraint could be accepted at face value, boundaries were broken in the pursuit of design perfection. Under Cook, no definition is permitted to be static. Apple is not about doing more of something, or doing it better, or faster. It's about completely re-examining the very nature of that thing, whether it be books, or games, or paying for coffee.
Apple, and Google too, have entered the realm of Big Problems. In a gloablised world, the scope of a problem, and associated solution, has the potential to touch millions of people and to reshape their lives. Cook's own experiences in his personal life may have given him a more empathetic touch than Jobs can claim to have had; Cook has experienced illness, discrimination, and a misdiagnosis scare which affected his perception of the world and his position in it. With Cook at the helm, Apple is aiming to bring technology solutions into the world on a collective, rather than individualised scale. Charitable giving, charitable works, and the power of a crowd - of many small units of change affecting one big change - are a part of that new vision.
