Charity

The ongoing saga of Chicago teenager Lauren McClusky and her fight to keep the name McFest attached to her charity concert event -- even as McDonald's attorneys seek to block her from doing so -- now involves an ocean liner, thousands of comments from AOL users, and public relations people who refuse to speak about the matter other than through prepared McStatements.

McClusky became a mini-celebrity in her home town and beyond Tuesday, as the WalletPop exclusive about McDonald's seeking to block the trademark application for her charity concert series name made the front page of the Chicago Sun-Times. National news outlets from Inside Edition to Fox News have flooded the office of her father Jeff McClusky, an independent record promoter, with phone calls seeking interviews.

Lauren's story has also been picked up by the Huffington Post and generated more than 70,000 views an hour on AOL -- and more than 1 million page views total.

You couldn't blame Lauren McClusky of Chicago if she were a bit squeamish about using her last name in this story without fear of reprisal from Ronald McDonald and his legal posse.

For McClusky, 19, finds herself at the center of a thorny dispute that involves a series of charity concerts she's put on over the past three years. She dubbed the event "McFest" (more on that in a moment) -- but McDonald's sees that as an infringement on its trademarks, something the McDonaldland lawyers refer to as "the McFamily of brands."

These include (deep breath): McPen, McBurger, McBuddy, McWatch, McDouble, McJobs, McShirt, McPool, McProduct, McShades, McFree, McRuler, McLight -- and even the prefix "Mc" itself.

"But not McFest," pointed out McClusky, who declined to change her last name for this story. "The whole reason I called it McFest in the first place is my name."

Her original co-chair for the first McFest also shared the "Mc" prefix in her surname, so it seemed a natural. And indeed, not a single McDonald's attorney seemed to object in 2007 and 2008, when McClusky's McFests raised $30,000 for the Chicago chapter of Special Olympics.

At noon on January 14, the Huffington Post blasted credit card companies for taking a cut on Haiti donations because people charged these donations to their credit cards. To avoid further embarrassment, American Express and Visa both agreed, after the article came out, to rebate any fees taken out of donations between January 12 and the end of February. If you want to be sure 100 percent of your donation is going to help the people of Haiti, charge the donation using your American Express or Visa card and make the donation to one of these 65 charities approved by American Express.

Each year American banks and credit card companies make huge profits on your charitable donations. The Huffington Post estimates that amount to be in the neighborhood of $250 million a year, because credit card companies charge on average a 3 percent processing fee for most donations.

Oscar Mayer's name is synonymous with two things: processed meat and catchy jingles. Start singing, "My bologna has a first name...." and chances are several people will join in to finish the song. The song debuted in the 1970s with a commercial that's pure Americana: A small boy, sitting on a dock and holding a fishing pole in one hand and a bologna sandwich in the other, joyfully launching into the catchy tune. The Oscar Mayer Wiener jingle ("Oh I wish I were an Oscar Mayer weiner...")became so popular after its 1963 radio debut that school marching bands played the song and consumers requested radio stations to play the tune, according to a history of Kraft Foods' (KFT) Oscar Mayer brands.

So how can Oscar Mayer top the popularity of these decades-old campaigns? By spending more than $50 million on what the brand says is its biggest advertising campaign in its 125-year history. The new campaign uses the tag line "It Doesn't Get Better Than This" and ties together the brand's products in a way that its jingles -- which promoted bologna and hot dogs separately -- weren't able to do.

It seems like every personal finance guru on the planet is recommending clothing swaps as a fun, easy way of getting some new clothes and getting rid of some old ones. Just invite your friends over, have drinks, watch a Corey Feldman movie, and swap clothes!

Even celebrities are jumping on the clothing swap trend. US Weekly reports that "Newly-single Reese Witherspoon's idea of a fun Friday night? A clothing swap party with pals! 'There are three of us who wear pretty much the same size,' the mom of two tells InStyle UK mag. 'I wore my girlfriend's dress to a wedding recently. It's fun.' "

Port-au-Prince's airport terminal is shattered, electricity is off, and all services decimated, but there's still one way to get into Haiti: by sea. Royal Caribbean's Independence of the Seas is scheduled to call on the north coast three times next week, the first such visit since the quake. The port is undamaged, and the line would have returned on Friday, except it's waiting for the green light from the local government to resume its regular stops. (Update: USA Today reports the Independence of the Seas will visit Haiti as planned on Friday, and it's bringing relief supplies to be distributed by Food for the Poor.)

One of the most clever recent tactics of the cruise lines has been the creation of "private" islands and beaches scattered throughout the Caribbean. Disney Cruise Line's is in the Bahamas. Royal Caribbean, and its sister line Celebrity, have one in Haiti. It's not near the tattered capital, but on the north coast, far from the turmoil, protected by fences and cordoned off from the rest of the country by a curtain of mountains.

Ships dock on the scenic peninsula -- which Royal Caribbean has registered under the name Labadee -- in the morning at around 8 a.m., spend the day at the beach, and leave before dinner. Passengers, who are not given the papers that allow them to leave the grounds of the resort, have no contact with the surrounding country except within the tightly controlled zone around the ship. There, they make memories zip lining, para-sailing, and enjoying a newly-built aqua park.

This hermetically sealed, fantasy version of the Caribbean is secreted in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. This dichotomy has long irked some travelers as inauthentic and decadent, and the criticisms intensified by the on-board descriptions of the port, which often omitted its location in Haiti (the web-based itineraries are clear about it). But this week, this arrangement marks the only happy arrival of foreigners outside of aid workers and emergency services. Haiti needs it.

When the news broke just over 24 hours ago that a major earthquake had hit in Haiti killing thousands, downing buildings and crippling an already fragile infrastructure, news networks immediately began questioning how aid would arrive and from where.

While nations got busy responding with assurances and pledges of support for the citizens of Haiti another call, or rather text, was going out to raise money and support for Haitians by company called mGive, which in just one day had raised $1.2 million for Red Cross via text messages to text Haiti. (Read an update from Daily Finance).

I used to be a big fan of the microlending nonprofit Kiva.org, thinking my $25 and $50 loans were really going via Kiva to that goat farmer in Kenya smiling on its Web site, and the single mother in Guatemala running a clothing shop to support her kids. Then I read how Kiva doesn't really make direct loans. The storytelling method it used to get people to pony up money masked the fact that Kiva wasn't being forthright about how the loans were distributed. Apparently, other similar nonprofits often fudge when that tell you "your $2 a day can feed and clothe little Maria in Cuzco." Sorry, Sally Struthers, even you are hard to trust now.

So is there any way you can lend directly to a hard-working person, other than handing cash to your neighbor down the street starting a business in his garage? Yes, says this National Geographic-sponsored company. Novica is a Los Angeles company that lets artisans worldwide sell their work on its Web site. It promises fair trade by not charging artisans any fees and letting them lower or raise prices of their artwork as they see fit. Recently, Novica announced it would help its artists expand their businesses by helping them get access to microloans.

This Sunday on ABC's Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, 2008 American Idol winner and multi-platinum seller David Cook pitches in to help a family build a new house for their sick daughter. Cook uses Skype to call in to WalletPop's Jason Cochran and give the behind-the-scenes story of his stint as a volunteer handyman. He also talks real estate. No, really!

Before he was yanked from obscurity by the Fox TV show, Cook was on the edge of financial disaster. He was shacking up with a friend from Tulsa, in debt, and working hand-to-mouth as a painter. Sometimes, he had to make the hard choice that so many Americans have to make these days: Do I pay the rent this month or eat?

Cook recounts those days with Jason, and he reminisces a little about the first big purchase he made when he knew he had more of a financial cushion. Here's a hint: "I'm a bit of a wino," Cook says.

When a $25,000 check turned up in the mail at a Charleston, S.C., Salvation Army office last month, the staff did what seemed rational: deposited it and spent the money on toys and food for about 100 families.

New York City's homeless may be wearing a motley collection of castoff clothing: the rejects from the closets of more financially-blessed residents, perhaps, or the logo merchandise from now-merged banks or defunct companies, maybe even some cast-offs from local discount retailers that lingered too long on the clearance racks. Yet, you won't see any such freebies from H& M or Walmart. Instead of donating unsold clothes to the needy, the two retailers have evidently been quietly stuffing unloved frocks in the trash.

According to The New York Times, unsold clothes from the two retailers were found destroyed in garbage bags outside the H&M store on 34th Street east of Sixth Avenue, and in the nearby 35th Street Walmart. At Walmart, unworn clothes had been punched with holes by some sort of machine. At H&M, they'd been slashed by a box cutter, rendering a bunch of fiber-filled coats unwearable.

Probably at the bottom of the list of things the millions of donors to the Salvation Army expect of those running the charity's programs would be arrogance and a cushy lifestyle.

If you're one of those donors, the purchases of two homes in Massachusetts for Salvation Army officers and the comments by a resident of one might change that perspective.

The Salvation Army, a religious organization best known for helping the homeless and addicted, does not lavish great wealth upon its officers. But as part of its compensation package, it does provide them with housing.

The profitable industry of saving souls has apparently hit a speed bump. Pastor Rick Warren of the megachurch, Saddleback, sent out an urgent letter this week to all of the 22,000 members that $900,000 was needed to balance the budget. Citing lower contributions due to the economy, he has requested that the shortfall be addressed this weekend and reportedly the members have lined up to help.

Saddleback isn't the only megachurch able to raise money. Featuring huge stages, rock bands, jumbotron screens, buckets of and oodles of money, as well as the enormity of other facilities, pastor personalities and income -- over $8.5 billion a year all told -- these churches are impressive forces flourishing at staggering rates.

Many trends have started here on the Left Coast and migrated east across the United States. Add to that list this latest entry: Chihuahuas.

Yes friends, we apparently have too many of the little toe-nippers, and rather than just continue to euthanize them in our already overcrowded county animal shelters -- where they apparently surpass pit bulls as the No. 1 dog calling a county cell home -- we have taken to shipping them to other parts of the country, places that Paris Hilton and her Tinkerbell have only flown over.

The problem is this: Turned into a pop-culture icon by dogs like the aforementioned teacup Tinkerbell and Bruiser, Reese Witherspoon's pink-clad accessory in "Legally Blonde," the breed's popularity grew and the fickle public being the fickle public, well, the bulging-eyed pups followed those 101 Dalmatians right to doggie death row: the public animal shelters. Los Angeles animal shelters report about 300 Chihuahuas are turned in each month; similar numbers are reported in the Bay Area.

Need money fast? Don't have what it takes to stand out by the freeway with a sign and your hand out? Fortunately, you live in a new era, when even the begging can be done online in the comfort and safety of your own home. (Or the library.)

Yesterday as a friend of mine was putting groceries into her car, she was approached by a homeless man carrying a cardboard sign and asking for money. She offered him some of the bananas she had just purchased, but he said he already had food, what he needed was money to find a room for the night. She wouldn't help him there. In a darkening lot she didn't want to open her wallet and take out the few dollars that were inside. Like many people, she has become cynical about handing over cash. This woman prefers to give financial donations directly to shelters and organizations. Still, she felt bad about turning him away. It's hard to ignore real need when it's staring you in the face.

Which is why when I learned of websites devoted to online panhandling and begging, I wondered how effective they could be when most of us have become distrustful enough to turn someone down face to face.

Begslist, Cyberbeg and DonateMoney2Me are websites designed for the purpose of posting personal needs. Begslist provides its service for free, taking its look and its cue from the all-popular Craigslist. while Cyberbeg offers premium placement of a posting for a small fee. Cyberbeg users also pay a percentage of their take to Paypal.