Anita Roddick Quotes

With TOMS, I found a way to create sustainable giving and consistently help those who are in need.

I started off with making personal donations and eventually set up my own foundation, VTCY Foundation, now known as Better Malaysia Foundation. My contributions are also made through companies that I own.

When people make donations to non profits, they want to know that their money goes to good use.

Much corporate giving is charitable in nature rather than philanthropic.

I have a philanthropy advisor, Hari Menon, who was earlier at the Gates Foundation.

When we started our foundation, I was less than 30 years old. We pledged that 10 per cent of our profits, whatever the amount, would be used for a social cause, and that we would be actively involved in that cause.

Today, we don't blink an eye when the world's wealthiest individuals donate enormous sums of money to charitable causes. In fact, we expect them to do so.

I would never want to take TOMS or myself into an issues debate. That's not what we're about. We're about helping people.

It's hard to be a good philanthropist in China.

As a company, we don't contribute to any cause except noncontroversial things like a breast cancer walk. I don't know anybody who is 'for' breast cancer.

I am currently doing about 30 charity auctions a year.

Basically, what we've done is, every year we take half the money and allow people who've helped us in the industry to give it away. One year, the ladies who put the pretzel bags in the boxes got to give it away.

I support many organizations that I feel are doing the right thing, like Alonzo Mourning's foundation, Alicia Keys' foundation, the Make-a-Wish Foundation, and other well-established foundations. I kick out a lot of time and money wherever I can.

Personal philanthropy must be separated from corporate philanthropy. Personal philanthropy is more about giving back to society, or giving forward, as it is now referred to.

I truly believe that philanthropy and commerce can work together.

We went around and looked and talked to a lot of foundations with those charities and decided upon the Children's Hospital. They had a golf tournament at the time, but it was a small event that didn't raise a significant amount of money.

I don't know if people understand that there are different ways to raise money for great causes.

For us, my wife and I and all of my partners believe that corporations have to be corporate citizens, and individuals who benefit from them, or who have built them, need to give back.

As you might imagine, I'm approached by lots of organizations and lots of people who want me to support their various charitable efforts in some way. And I look at those requests, and I basically try to do what I can.

One of my dreams in life is to do fund-raising for the youth.

I have always examined closely the motives of any group for which I am asked to raise money.

I think all philanthropy invests in product innovation, whether in a vaccine or a new kind of product of one sort or another, and I think we'll all continue to do that.

As both a local resident and a parent with a CF-afflicted child, I'm thankful for companies like Canon, Chase and Outback who believe that giving back to the community is critical to their role as corporate citizens.

I was on the board of Andre Agassi's foundation, and seeing the way it operated blew my mind. In 2002, I told my wife, I want to start a foundation to give back, I want it to be for kids in hard circumstances, and I want it to be culinary-driven, because that's who I am.

In the same way that you're driven in your business to keep innovating - Facebook is a wonderful example of constant innovation - think about doing that in philanthropy.