At least for a hot minute.
What do you do when the corporation you work for doesn’t align with your political principles? What if your C-level leaders at the corporation that appears on your paycheck donate money or embrace sociopolitical ideals that are in no way representative of your own? Do you quit? Easier said than done. The middle class is struggling. That’s not an easy or affordable stance to take. So maybe you look for more subversive ways to take on the man and still cash your paycheck.
That thought process is what spawned The Blue Donkey into existence. The brainchild of MSCHF (the company behind such succinctly dissident projects such as M-Journal and Bull & Moon), The Blue Donkey is simply put — perk laundering.
One of the benefits of working for a large corporation is that little plastic discount card you often forget to use. Corporations (and small businesses) partner with companies like Grubhub/Seamless to offer discounts to employees on food related services. Sometimes there are gym membership discounts, retail discounts and other things on that little plastic perk card. The point is, it exists.
I mention Grubhub/Seamless because it is at the core of what The Blue Donkey is doing. The process is simple. If your company utilizes Seamless as an employee perk, you can use it to purchase “food” at The Blue Donkey. Food is in quotes because The Blue Donkey is not an actual restaurant. It is a shell company, pretending to be a restaurant. When you purchase, your money is converted to donation to a political Presidential candidate (of your choice) that may support anti-corporate policies.
The purchases are routed to Grubhub/Seamless, which are then paid to MSCHF. MSCHF then doles out the cash to employees who then make individual contributions, up to the individual contribution limit. To that end, right now the focus seems to mostly be on Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, with Andrew Yang for the lulz. The goal is to route funds from big corporations towards candidates that will either break up, regulate or at least tamper these companies power and influence.
It’s likely a complete violation of Grubhub/Seamless’ policies on perks and surely will be shut down as quickly as it gains any kind of popularity. And MSCHF knows it, noting in its FAQ that while MSCHF has done its best to remain within the law, it could be going against the ToS of Grubhub/Seamless as well as putting an asterisk next to the statement that “Seamless/Grubhub should probably tighten their restaurant requirements”.
Furthermore, according to its disclaimer asking for phone number verification MSCHF states: “We’re violating basically everyone’s ToS so we’re vetting who gets access. Put in your phone number so we can text you and verify you don’t work for Seamless [winky face emoji].” MSCHF might be covering its ass as best it can here, but it’s doubtful that Grubhub/Seamless will let this stand for very long.
For the purposes of this article, I started composing an email to reach out to Grubhub/Seamless, but it would have been difficult to pose the hypothetical in a way that would not reveal the project. Since this was under embargo until this morning, I decided to not tip the scales and will update accordingly if Grubhub/Seamless replies to the belated email or to MSCHF directly.
As to why MSCHF is once again poking the proverbial bear with a pointy stick, it’s in the FAQ. “When we see a system, we gotta break it.”
Update (4:04pm EST): Grubhub/Seamless has shut off access to The Blue Donkey, faster than it could even pass its first fake health inspection.
