The founders of the Canadian retail chain Music World have donated five million dollars to the Canadian Red Cross for Tsunami disaster relief:
The gift, by Kroum and Eva Pindoff, who made their fortune by founding the record retailer Music World, is the largest-ever gift to the Canadian Red Cross during a disaster appeal, the organisation said.
The couple pledged 100,000 Canadian dollars (82,000 dollars US) for tsunami relief on Friday, but after reflecting on the disaster, decided to do much more.
“After seeing more stark images of this tremendous tragedy and misery, my wife and I were up most of the night, grief-stricken,” Kroum Pindoff said.
“We wanted to help alleviate the suffering, and decided we had to make a more substantial gift.”
That’s the kind of staggering generosity that somehow helps to restore a bit of faith in humanity.
Of course, people will start saying that they did it through the business for the tax deduction, or as a publicity stunt, or a number of cynical reasons that I’d probably usually be the first to list. But for the moment, I’m choosing to believe that they made the donation simply because they felt it was the right thing to do, and wanted to help. Sometimes it’s good to set cynicism aside for a moment and give people credit for their generosity.
Leaving aside for the moment, the extreme generosity of the Pindoffs (they’ve actually contributed $17M over the years!!!) this begs the question, why is the Federal Gov’t slapping surcharges on recording media? It would appear that the music retailing/wholesaling/recording business is exceedingly healthy if it can generate that kind of surplus, absolutely no disrespect intended towards these gentle kind folk (the Pindoffs, not the Feds).