PHILANTHROPY: So the Blind May See

In 1948, Henry Staffel, 52, Chicago meat packer and owner of the Perk Dog Food Co., teamed up with a new business partner: Bishop Bernard Sheil, Roman Catholic auxiliary bishop of Chicago and founder of the Pilot Guide Dog Foundation, which supplies free dogs to the blind. Their agreement was no ordinary business deal. Staffel, who had long wanted to do something for the blind, agreed to turn over to the foundation “forever” the profits on every can (about a penny) of Perk Dog Food for which a label was mailed in to Bishop Sheil. “I had no idea at the time,” says Staffel, “how many people read the offers on labels.”

Last week the 125 millionth Perk label came into the foundation’s Chicago office. And out from Staffel went another check, bringing the total of profit payments since 1948 up to $125,000.

Today, Perk’s profits provide P.G.D.F. with 90% of its operating costs, pay for the guide dogs and their training (i.e., instructor fee, room & board) for blind persons who could not otherwise have afforded them.

Even though Staffers agreement has cut heavily into profits on Perk, which now accounts for one-third of his business, he has plenty of other profitmaking products (he owns the Ready Foods Canning Corp. and the Roger Staffel Meat Co.) to keep him going. Born in Chicago, Staffel started working when he was 16, was managing a meat-packing plant by the time he was 21. In 1934 he started Ready Foods, followed with Perk, since the war has opened a provision business, two slaughtering houses, one canning plant and bought a boneless-roasted-turkey business. Says Staffel: “It may sound corny but we’ve had a lot of good luck since we started this thing.” He plugs the Perk agreement in his sales-promotion campaign on his can labels. In four years Perk’s sales have jumped 100% v. a 75%-or-less rise which Staffel figures they would have had without the agreement. He now gives so much more than the 5% charity donations allowed corporations as tax-free deductions by the Internal Revenue Department that a special tax ruling allows the entire donation to be written off.

Recently Staffel extended the penny contribution offer to include labels from some of his other products, but what he would really like to see is the spread of the idea to industry in general. Says he: “Business today has come to be pictured as a ruthless thing. A project like this shows people that it is not ruthless, and that they themselves can take part with business in helping a worthy cause.”