My column this week is on the one-to-one businesses, TOMS being the most well-known, sprouting up all over the place. But before you go shoe shopping with a big, guiltless smile on your well-intentioned face, read a bit about some of the important distinctions between different types of approaches. An excerpt:

To begin with, giving a kid a pair of shoes manufactured elsewhere undermines the economic vitality of that kid’s community, as many bloggers have noted. Further, as Saundra Schimmelpfennig, a blogger at Good Intentions Are Not Enough, points out, shoes are already manufactured fairly cheaply in countries like Argentina, where Mycoskie was traveling when he decided to start TOMS. Expanding the manufacturing industry in poor countries is often seen ...