GM Problem: NRA Giving Away Chevy Silverado

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 12, 3:04AM EST · Published Feb 25, 6:42AM EST

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General Motors Co. (NYSE: GM) can’t do anything about it. The NRA has a sweepstakes and the prize is a 2017 Chevy Silverado 1500, heavily modified by a race car builder. The organization calls it the “NRA Special Edition Truck.”

The sweepstakes is part of a strategy to keep and gain new members. Anyone can enter, however, one of the pieces of information the NRA asks for when people do enter is their NRA Member ID. The NRA also asks for a $10 donation from anyone who signs up. People can enter more than once, and the $10 request applies to each entry.

Even though the NRA is a nonprofit, those who enter cannot take a tax deduction. And, gifts to the NRA are not refundable.

The sweepstake puts another brand at risk. The Chevy Silverado has been modified by Richard Childress Racing. Childress has two teams in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series and three teams in the NASCAR XFINITY Series. Childress has sponsorship arrangements with Caterpillar, Dow, American Ethanol, Grainger, AAA, GM’s Chevrolet and Bass Pro Shops. Each of these brands has some risk because of the Childress participation is the modification of the Chevy truck used for the NRA sweepstakes.

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The NRA’s description of the truck:

The Chevrolet Silverado 1500 is a powerhouse truck, setting the benchmark for on and off-road performance. Now Richard Childress Racing – masters at building race cars from the ground up – are giving NRA’s 2017 Silverado the full-throttle treatment. Bristling with custom features and new technology, this beast is truly one-of-a-kind.

The NRA has relationships with many other large U.S. companies and their brands. Since the Parkland, Flordia, school shooting, a number of these companies, include Delta Air Lines, United Continental, Hertz, MetLife and Chubb have ended their ties to the nonprofit.

GM does not have the ability to stop the NRA from using its Silverado in the sweepstakes. It has to wait until the sweepstakes ends and hope the NRA won’t use another Silverado for the same purpose later.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.