Conservative charitable corporations, including Walmart, Goya, and credit card firm Coign, are helping victims of Hurricane Helene, and they are eyeing expansion for those who could face disaster from Hurricane Milton, which is headed for Central Florida.
Walmart is donating $6 million and thousands of pounds of food and water.
Goya Cares has teamed with Women for Trump, a group that supports the GOP presidential nominee, to ship food to the disaster zone.
And Bass Pro Shops and Rev. Franklin Graham’s Samaritan’s Purse are also delivering goods and money to relief efforts as the federal government grapples with the disaster and slowly puts officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency in place.
Much of the focus by conservative groups is on fundraising, a critical target since FEMA has spent so much of its budget on the migrant crisis. Former President Donald Trump, for example, helped to establish a Hurricane Helene victim’s GoFundMe page that has raised over $7 million from 2,600 donors by noon on Tuesday.
Coign, a Visa credit card created to help consumers steer philanthropic efforts to conservative causes, told Secrets that it has contributed to Trump’s GoFundMe and Samaritan’s Purse and plans to steer some of its transaction fees to conservative causes such as the Helene projects.
Rob Collins, Coign’s founder and CEO and the former executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said that some of the company’s customers asked to make its donations to conservative charities helping with Helene’s victims.
“We got 300-400 emails from folks saying we’ve got to help out with Hurricane Helene. People had suggestions, and we were able to accommodate them by giving to the Trump GoFundMe and Samaritan’s Purse,” he said in an interview.
Collins said that his team is now following Hurricane Milton and plans to help in that recovery. “God willing, Milton only hits one state and hopefully doesn’t hit it that hard. But we will look and see if there’s something in Florida specific that we can help with. It’s going right through Fort Myers and Naples, and there’s a lot of retirement communities down there and people with mobility issues and fixed income. So when these hurricanes hit, they get hit disproportionately,” he said.
While politics doesn’t play a big role in contributions from companies, it does send a signal to customers that the corporation understands who its customers are.
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And it can also help to build trust and support in companies. Collins said he is seeing that in his company’s effort to encourage his customers to invest in Coign. He said that those who have the Visa card can invest as little as $500.
“We had a first-week goal of $50,000 — we blew through that in a day. You know, we’re probably at almost near $400,000,” he said.