It’s hard to make me really angry.  I’m more the Hawaiian type of Volcano than Mount Saint Helens or Krakatoa – in that I tend to gently vent a lot (see this blog, for example) rather than exploding with any real violence.

But like my street researcher the Blonde Bombshell, who is normally quiet, but turns into “an avenging angel” at the sight of injustice, my buttons really get pushed when I see marketing used for legalized fraud – to obfuscate the truth, hide behind legitimate causes, and separate good people from their money, thus simultaneously stealing from honest citizens and depriving the truly needy of help.

I speak, of course, of “For profit professional fundraisers” – the folks who solicit your assistance under the guise of a charity (“for the firefighters… for 9/11… for Katrina victims…”) and then make off with 90%+ of the money and goods given.

The most recent example of this is operating in the New England area, a company called “Gotbooks.com” (registered under community book solutions, robert ticehurst, 25 Springwell Rd, Billerica, Massachusetts 01821 -- bob@communitybooksolutions.com ).

Now GotBooks looks like a great group of people doing work for a noble cause. Their radio and print advertisements (and their website) touts their work as “a local organization whose primary mission is to support the community through books”.

They talk about saving books through donation vs books getting thrown away, giving away books to libraries, sending books overseas to soldiers, and partnering with local charitable groups (like schools) to help fundraise.

Here’s the problem.

Buried far, far down in the FAQ on their website, barely meeting the legal requirements for disclosure, is this statement: “Got Books is a for-profit professional fundraiser and used book seller”.

Yes, that’s right.  They’re a company with the goal of making money.

So what’s actually going on?

Answers [With notes from my email conversation with 30-year old Bob Ticehurst, their El Presidente -- who, by the way, also is enough of shill to spam-post for himself, talking about himself in the third person, see http://www.yelp.com/topic/woburn-got-books--advertising-reviews ]:

Step 1. You give GotBooks books for free. [No disagreement from Bob]

Step 2. GotBooks has a weekend booksale at their warehouse, half of the profits of which "go to non-profit groups". Sounds good, but let's figure out how much money this could be.

Ignoring the accounting distinction between "profits" and "proceeds" (and Bob, who was an accountant, knows the difference very well), given a 10 hour day of busy selling, and using comparable proceeds from other bookstores, this could be as much as $20k (tax deductible) to charity per year (and $20k to Bob) (Bob doesn't reveal numbers)

BUT GotBooks is greedy. 

All seven days per week (not just saturday mornings), they list and sell books on Amazon, Alibris, and half.com. [Bob phrases this differently on the website, but it's what they do].

Published numbers here http://www.endicia.com/CaseStudies/GotBooks/ show 1500 packages per day.

Assuming only $5 per book, and one package per book, we're seeing another $2.73 million dollars of proceeds per year.

So GotBooks is generously donating (for a deduction) slightly more than half of one percent per year. Wow. Impressive generosity... NOT.

Step 3. But wait! A few of the leftovers are given to the troops! Their site shows almost 5k books given to troops...

...of the (1500 per day = 550,000 per year) they sell -- again, almost a generous 1%.

Wow. Impressively cheap and sleazy.

[Bob also states that GotBooks ships directly to the troops -- but didn't provide any evidence of this. In fact, as he acknowledged on Yelp, he also / possibly exclusively uses existing charities that ship overseas to satisfy the nominal “donate books to soldiers”] (again, cost to Gotbooks.com = approx zero)

Step 4. The remainder of the books, that they can't sell, are dumped on (excuse me, Bob prefers the term 'given to') libraries, who are saddled with the cost of pulping books so worthless they can’t be sold.

Once more, cost to Gotbooks.com = zero. Cost to local libraries = substantial, doubling the insult of GotBooks having just stripped library volunteer groups of their previous valuable, salable donations.

Step 5. GotBooks can then take the tax deduction from their library donation -- tripling the taxpayer support they're nursing.

That's right -- libraries depend on your tax dollars, so increasing their costs costs you; GotBooks' tax deductions reduce collected taxes, increasing tax burden on you too.)(Bob claims this is not the case, but refused to provide documentation to this effect)

Other marketers, take a lesson – you can always make money by misleading people. But if you’re going to do that, why not just engage in ID theft, or 3-card monte on a street corner – it’s more honest.

In closing -- there's more than a bit of irony here...

...as Bob's former domain name, which still redirects to his business, is "marinebob.com".  (I'll refrain from commenting on the use of one's service to the country, all of who have performed such I appreciate, as a marketing tool to sell used books...)

Assuming Bob was referring to a branch of the armed services, not "sealife", I'd simply ask Bob whether he can look at himself in the mirror, and really believe that GotBooks' marketing holds true to the USMC leadership trait and code of "integrity: uprightness of character and soundness of moral principles; includes the qualities of truthfulness and honesty".

(Is that 1% donation enough to soothe your conscience about the sleazy, misleading-at-best, evil marketing? Really?).

Dear readers, what do you think?

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