Rules & ResourcesNewspaper Support Center
Home-Delivery Promotions Guidebook—U.S. Newspapers
Charitable Donations
A newspaper may decide to donate a portion of the consumer’s subscription purchase price to a charitable organization and use this as an incentive to generate home-delivery circulation.
A newspaper may not use revenue from subscription sales to generate funds for Newspapers in Education.
Pricing
When a subscription to the newspaper is sold where the consumer is informed that a portion of the purchase price will be donated to a charity, the amount paid by the consumer must be no less than 25 percent of basic home-delivery prices plus the amount presented to the consumer as a donation. See Rule C 5.7 Sponsored Subscriptions
Promotional Material
All promotional material must:
- State the term and frequency of the subscription.
- State the purchase price.
- Indicate the specific amount of the donation and name of charity.
- Reflect a qualifying price
Example – Charitable Donations
Reporting
Circulation generated from the sale of subscriptions inclusive of a charitable donation is reflected in Paragraphs 1A, 2, and 6B of the ABC Publisher’s Statement.
In Paragraph 1A, the circulation is classified as Home Delivery under Paid for by Individual Recipients. For individually paid circulation, ABC requires a newspaper to delineate between circulation sold at 50 percent or more of basic prices and circulation sold at less than 50 percent, but at least 25 percent of basic prices. Therefore, the subscription copies should be included in the appropriate price category based on the price the consumer actually paid for the subscription.
In Paragraph 2, the circulation is classified as Home Delivery, based on the specific ABC zone where the copies are delivered to the subscriber.
Paragraph 6B will include a description of all charitable donation programs. For each program, the description will identify the price at which the subscriptions were sold to the consumer, the amount of the donation, the name of the charity and the quantity of subscriptions sold.