Page 197 - The Bible On Leadership

Justice and Fairness 183

Gun Denhart of Hanna Anderson has followed this command with
her Hannadowns program. Most of us who have or have had young
children are familiar with the Hanna Anderson catalog of fine, colorful
cotton clothing. Many of us do not realize that Hanna Anderson has a
program, Hannadowns, that funnels customers’ outgrown clothing di-
rectly to people who ordinarily could never afford Hanna Anderson
clothing but need clothing desperately.
Any Hanna Anderson customer can return outgrown clothes and
receive a 20 percent credit on the purchase price. The clothes are do-
nated to needy women and children such as hurricane victims, religious
charities, or women’s shelters. If this sounds like a small program, it
isn’t: 10,000 items a month are returned and donated.
And once again, fairness and justice result in improved numbers. The
Hannadowns participants are Hanna Anderson’s best customers; they
spend three times the money of the average customer. The company
received an additional benefit: They were able to hire some of the for-
mer residents of the women’s shelters, and they have become an ‘‘em-
ployer of choice,’’ no longer needing to advertise positions.
Says Gun Denhart, ‘‘Money is like manure. If you let it pile up, it
just smells. But if you spread it around, you can encourage things to
grow.’’ 8

‘‘FAIR SHARE’’

The question of ‘‘who gets what’’ has been debated since biblical times.
The Bible has several passages that address the issue of what constitutes
a ‘‘fair share’’ of the proceeds, harvest, or spoils of war. James 2:1–4
points out that rich and poor alike have rights: ‘‘If you show special
attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, ‘Here’s a good seat
for you,’ but say to the poor man, ‘You stand there’ . . . have you not
discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil
thoughts?’’
Of course, the world is not perfectly fair. It has been pointed out that
the law, in its infinite fairness, forbids both rich and poor alike from