Michael Jackson, Charity & Social Enterprise

Torn Michael Jackson wheatpaste in Lower Manhattan by MBW, originally uploaded by Elisha Cook Jr..

UPDATE: Is Michael Jackson's charity a fake?

Originally posted on JustMeans:

I had at least three posts I was considering to put up today, but when I ducked into the nearest library while on a research quest the guards were heatedly discussing Michael Jackson. Their somber intonations that this is a historic day got me curious, so instead of jumping right to JustMeans--a great site, but like your typical social business hub admittedly not the best place to catch the latest celebrity gossip--I hit the usual suspects to discover that Michael Jackson had just died.

Since we live a culture pretty much defined by the cult of personality (Josef Stalin, social innovator!), I've decided to set aside my thoughts on The Philanthropist, American Apparel and social censorship for a day when most of us aren't fervently Twittering "Michael Jackson is dead" just in case someone hasn't noticed the other 50,000 tweets about the news.

Instead, I want to offer a few brief memorial reflections about Michael Jackson and social enterprise.

Jackson, as this book documents, was quite active in charity, at one point breaking the Guinness record for most charities supported by a pop star. And whatever one thinks of his various activities at Neverland Ranch, it's pretty clear that he saw his life there as a way of giving back to the community. Jackson also was involved in high profile benefit singles--and therein lies another less well known controversy.

As Jackson testified in a business-related trial, the donation of proceeds from the sale of a charity song did not mean, for Jackson, donating all of the profits. The money from the sale of CDs went to charity, but Jackson retained the song's copyright & personally kept the royalties. This caused a bit of dustup when the news media learned that a any time "We Are the World" or the 9/11 charity song "What More Can I Give?" get played on the radio, the proceeds go to not to charity but to the copyright holders, including Jackson himself.

The dustup over Jackson's alleged charitable profiteering provides an instructive example about social business for those of us in the social enterprise community. In our world, as in the music industry more generally, the idea of getting some personal returns from a charitable enterprise is not inherently problematic----musicians need to earn a living just like anyone else, even professional nonprofiteers. Besides Michael Jackson, John Lennon had some rather pointed things to say about this, astutely observing how various promoters & benefit workers profit from charitable work but expect musicians to give all their labor for free. Nonetheless, there's a popular impression that a charitable benefit should be wholly outside the realm of exchange, to the point that no one in the endeavor--not even the grunts--should get paid.

The fact that this expectation exists does not, of course, mean that we have abide by it, but for those of us who don't have the luxury of being international superstars this perspective can pose some difficult problems, from loss of needed donor support to the occasional legislative crackdown.

But more about that another day. For now, a moment of silence for a man who, like so many of us, gave as much as he felt that he could.