Charities That Don't Get the Message

oscash

oscash

Senior Member
Location
Sydney - Australia
I must get at least 4 letters a week from charities requesting donations to help their cause. Sometimes they include a small gift such as a sheet of pretty paper with my name and address on it , or a small biro pen with my name on it. I used to send them back, sometimes with a small donation, telling them that this is a one-off donation and to not send anymore requests. They never listen and send another request about 8 weeks later. Sometimes I might get a small shopping bag included. This must be expensive to post to customers and also with a reply-paid envelope. This is getting out of hand and now I have decided to tear up the request forms.
Do any of the members On here have the same problem?>
 

When they arrive, return unopened and marked with “DECEASED”. I had to do that to stop them pestering my mother. She would keep donating because she didn’t remember she‘d just done it. It was a creepy thing to write; it worked.
 
oscash said:
Thanks Jules , I'll have to try that one.
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It does sound creepy, but it worked.

Another way I tested what charities or even magazines were selling my name to others was using a slightly different name. One would be Jules A. Jones, the next Jules B. Jones, etc. I also wrote on the form that if they sold my name, they’d never get another donation. It sure became obvious who was doing it. I stuck to that promise.
 
oscash said:
Do any of the members On here have the same problem?>
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We donate to several charities, mainly animal oriented. It is pretty clear that some, or most, are in the address sharing business. If you no longer wish to contribute to a particular charity and want the letters to stop, you might try calling them. Personally we just toss the daily load of letters in the recycle bin, and contribute as we wish. Not a big deal.
 
Bella said:
I just pitch them and eventually they stop soliciting.
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I agree. Best to just ignore them.
My mother just couldn't ignore them and they got more and more aggressive and demanding. She had dementia and this made the situation worse.
She treated them like bills she was obligated to pay.
Finally my sister told her to put them aside and she would take care of them when she came. Of course she took them home and through them away.
It was a bad situation for a while.
 
I spend very little time ignoring junk mail. I use my pick up to go down the hill to my mailbox, and I have a waste basket right at the driver side door in my garage for the junk mail.
 
No good deed goes unpunished. If you give to charities, they tend to reward you by asking again and again for money, and many will sell your name to other charities as a soft touch for their fundraising. One might argue that the federal government is the biggest charity of all, although contributions there are involuntary.

As charities will nickel and dime you to death, I tend to give mostly to my old university and the local animal shelter…
 
I once told a teller at my local post office that I write on the envelope, "Return to Sender", to any mail that I don't want, and put it in the mailbox. She told me that they don't send it back the original sender, they toss them out if there isn't another stamp on them.

There some charities in the past that I did contribute to for awhile. Cancer research (because of my father), Heart Disease (because of my mother & brother), breast cancer (because of my niece). Now it's been for Wounded Warriors (because of the suckers and losers comments, by the previous tenant in the White House). But whatever charity you make donations to, they share your name and address with other charities. Before you know it, almost every charity in the country, is sending you mail for donations.

March of Dimes sends me mail with a dime in it. I verbally thank them for the dime, and throw the mail away. I have gotten so many little writing pads, some with my name on it. Address labels and stickers, I throw out. I have my own return address labels.

The ones that really get me mad are not the charities. It's the ones from Car Shield (the biggest rip off company, F rating by the Better Business Bureau,) and political mail from the right wingers.
 
Call each charity on the phone and ask to be removed from all future mailings. You can also go to the BBB Give.org website and fill out the inquire or complain about a charity form. Tell them you want to be removed from all mailings. Charity Questions, Inquiry or Complain About a Charity (give.org)
Often when you donate to a charity your name and address are sold, charities sell, swap and trade names in order to generate new leads. If you want to donate to a charity, do it anonymously.

You can also use DMAChoice it is a consumer group that allows you to sign up and opt out of marketing and charity mail. DMAchoice is a mail preference service offered by the ANA. There is a fee for their service..
 
I was told that these big charity outfits hire companies that do the mailings for donations. I give yearly to St. Jude and I was donating to T2T, but stopped for personal reasons. I get charity requests on an almost daily basis. I do a lot of tossing out of envelope requests. They would be better off saving their money and what they pay to companies that do the mailings.
 
My stepfather was getting solicitations like crazy. I found this out (though I had suspicions) when he was in the hospital and rehab after a fracture. One day I pulled out 72 solicitations from his mail box. That was for two days. I was enraged and wanted to just throw that s*** and scream.

I emailed, called, sent back (some stamped) almost 300 places. Some had phone numbers, that went to voice mail only or a PO Box. Some had nothing but the address. I had an alphabetical list written out that I had to rewrite at least twice because it kept growing.

Is he still making donations? I don't know. I don't trust him. I won't do the above again.

I read in researching that one of the worst things you can do is make a small donation. They get a little money from you, realize you are real at that address and can send money, but you didn't send much. So they sell your name all over to get more money. I got no support in any of this. My brother just yelled at me over the phone from 3000 miles away to "just ignore it"

I make donation to a cat sanctuary and to a bald eagle rescue in Northern California. They don't sell your name or email. You have to be very selective. And that crap these places send is so wasteful.
 
Remy is correct. I have worked for an International Charity that everyone knows .. not dealing with donations tho' but as an Area Manager on the retail side of things, and I can tell you the worst thing you can do if you don't want to be inundated with begging letters from real and invented charities is to make any donation to them at all other than anonymously.

It's an appalling state of affairs, but until Charities all get their act together and stop sharing names and addresses, and sending more and more begging letter to those who are kind enough to Donate, it will never stop.

There are many tales here also like everyone else, where ( especially elderly).. people who live alone are being found to be paying charities almost as much as their income, and sometimes every penny they had in savings and living on next to nothing because they're old, they're confused and they get literally hundreds of these letters a month.. and they feel they feel obligated to donate.

One of the most annoying begging charities are those that beg on TV.. look at little Jonas.. he's living in a tribe in Africa, he has Glaucoma and is almost blind.. his parents can't afford to pay for his eye treatment, but you can.. because the treatment for little Jonas costs just £2... will you give him the gift of sight ?... now that advert is getting shown to anything up to 30 or 40 million people in the UK alone.. several times a day 365 days of the year... along with lots of similar adverts.. for starving children.. for inoculations.. for orphaned tigers.. orphaned Kangaroos.. and the request for money gets ever steeper....and just think I'm sure little Jonas and the rest are being shown in every advert in every Western country in the world.. Just imagine if only 1% donate to little Jonas alone.. out of those multi millions of viewers ?

The Salvation army asks for £20... £20???? not can you give a £1 or £2... no... it has to be £20.. and some pensioners here haven't much more than that to feed themselves.. yet because they once gave to a charity they're inundated with letters and phone calls....
 
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Most of my donations are online and mostly through CanadaHelps. They send an official email tax receipt. Depending on the charity they request a different optional fee you can pay. So if I donated $100, one charity might request help with an admin fee of $X and another might be $Y. Or you can just donate $100.

The best part is choosing NO SOLICITATIONS because the charities don’t have your info. If there’s a major event (fires, floods,) CanadaHelps may make a generic request.
 
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I do send an annual donation to a local agency that
feeds schoolkids all year long...however I made the stipulation
that the must use the $$ in local area only....and do not sell
my addy or phone....so far from what I can tell they have
honored my requests.....
 
I just feel this junk which i toss is just keeping the postal service in business. since so many no longer send letters or pay bills by mail etc.
 
For all the charities I donate to, I set up an auto donate online every month. So, I rarely see anything come in the mail. If I do, it’s junk mail.
 
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