"These corporations and their charity campaigns are just another way for them to recieve another dollar that you think that you are giving to a struggling family. its a wolf in sheep's clothing. every one of those 5 cents that they do donate they turn around and take a nice tax break with. their is nothing wrong with donating, just disguising yourself as a struggling family for individualistic profit. gotta love capitalism, i guess. they don't belive in what they are doing. they do it because we care not because they do."
Maybe it is. But, AFAIK, the donations they say they will make are spelled out pretty precisely--they have to, it's the law. If they put out a counter display for a specific charity, the money collected there has to go into the charity, period. That's different from a corporate policy on donating some portion of income to charity. Sure they get a tax break for the corporate donations--but only insofar as the donation is written off as a deductible expense.
OTOH, I don't see how you or I can know anything about their motivations--i.e., whether or not it's a personal value of these corporations. What about the various operations of such businesses as Brownell's, or Midway? They (and many other firearms businesses) have long both done "round-up' campaigns to donate to the NRA, as well as their own contributions (which may not be tax-deductible either, depending on which NRA operation the funds go to.)
Personally, I do my donations directly, and do not usually contribute to such (for example) Christmas campaigns--save for the Salvation Army; their mechanism provides the biggest direct benefit / least expense, IIRC. But, I really don't see any reason to think poorly of the businesses, big or otherwise, that do promote charity giving at Christmas.
And now, back to the subject at hand....
Jim H.