Disney has dropped the Boy Scouts of America from the roster of charities eligible to benefit from its Voluntears program, through which the company donates money to charities when its employees do volunteer work in their communities. The Scouts have a policy banning gay people from serving as scout leaders, and Disney has a policy banning charities that are "inconsistent with Disney's policies on the basis of race, religion, color, sex, national origin, age, marital status, mental or physical ability, or sexual orientation."
Last year, the BSA received $4.8M in funding through the Voluntears program.
According to Disney's charitable giving guidelines, groups become ineligible to receive Disney funding if they "discriminate in the provision of services unlawfully or in a manner inconsistent with Disney's policies on the basis of race, religion, color, sex, national origin, age, marital status, mental or physical ability, or sexual orientation."
Disney would not divulge its formula for converting volunteer hours to dollars, but a chart on Disney's corporate website shows that in 2010, employees raised $4.8 million via 548,000 volunteer hours, which works out to $8.79 an hour.
Among the events for which employees volunteered were a triathlon for Children's Hospital Los Angeles, the Revlon Run-Walk for cancer, Children's Hospital of Orange County Walk at Disneyland Resort and the Champion 5K at ESPN for the V Foundation, according to Disney.
Deena Fidas, the director of workplace equality for the Human Rights Campaign, said Disney's decision "carries a unique weight. When you think about brands that exemplify childhood, you think of Disney, and with them dissociating with BSA, it speaks volumes of where we are with the views we want to send to young people."
Disney to pull Boy Scouts funding by 2015 over policy banning gay leaders [Devon M. Sayers/CNN]
(Image: Disney and rainbows, a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from quinnanya's photostream)
