I have honestly never understood why we allow businesses to use customers for charitable causes. It seems like a huge conflict of interest and essentially co-mingles for-profit and none-profit legal entities. It reminds me of when I worked at a large financial institution that most have heard of that has their tax audit subfirm next-door to their tax consultation subfirm, then promises the government "they definitely aren't doing shady things".

If businesses want to support a charitable cause, why can't they support it? I don't understand how it became normal to mix buying a burger at Mcdonalds with donating to their somewhat shady charity?

This all leads me to the inevitable tin-foil-hat conspiracy that they deliberately exploit this (IMHO) very strange legal void in order to gauge customer price sensitivity and such, as one other comment pointed out.

I suppose if the company directly donated to charity, then they would raise prices to account for that, and then in the end the customer is still donating to charity. So at the end of the day, perhaps I'm just somewhat against for-profit businesses participating in none-profit activities. Is there a better way?

I'm not going against charity in general, not at all and quite the opposite, but rather just very confused how we, society, and the law in general have allowed businesses to access their customers for charitable donations. Am I missing something? Genuinely open to ideas.