Sunday, January 04, 2009

Donation Rant

Another rant.

I admit that I am usually cheap and I generally like to hold onto my money. But I do make donations to things that I want to support. And I've learned that making a donation, even a one time donation, automatically gets you signed up to their mailing list.

Keep this in mind: If you make a one time donation to an organization, and get on their mailing list, you will eventually get back the entirety of your donation in the form of letters. And of course this bothers me. (Some organizations have discovered email and send their letters out that way but most use paper letters.)

What really bothers me is that most of the letters I receive are essentially asking for more money. Yes, they use a part of my donation to solicit me for more money. Granted they flower it up with all the great things that are happening in their organization (which is totally fine). But in about paragraph three, you find out why they wrote the letter. I'm almost offended when they ask for more money. Why are you coming to me? Go solicit someone who hasn't given anything yet. I already gave you a donation (or I'm still making donations). If I felt I should give more I would have done it already. It makes me feel like they aren't happy with what I've already given.

So, where possible, I try to make a compromise: I'll make a donation on the condition that I never get any letters asking me for more money.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've never thought that if I wait long enough i'll get my money back in way of paper...now if i could sell that paper...-m

Susan Jones said...

Hi Jon, I enjoyed reading the first few entries of your blog and I love it! Good stuff.
Thank you for the share and I'll be a regular so keep writing.

Your neighbour - Susan