Charities: Do Not Gift!

All year 'round charitable organizations send out multiple times yearly, requests for donations. It might seem sensible to the average individual who receives multiple requests for donations from a single charity that it is enough to receive one request annually per charity. Obviously charitable organizations themselves receive no such recommendations that they might take seriously.

If one charity takes the initiative to send out multiple requests, then they all will, rather than permit one of them to have a potential advantage in fund-raising.

Charitable organizations seem increasingly more invested in perpetuating themselves as corporate interests than in their dedication to the causes that they serve in search of a better world. That, in any event, is the impression that many who give are increasingly subjected to. Which does not, actually, stop most people from continuing to send in their donations in the hope that it will indeed help to make a better world.

And it isn't as though these charitable groups have only one method of fund-raising at their disposal; mailed-out requests.

Increasingly, for those who choose to donate on-line, more sophisticated of the charitable organizations, such as Medecins sans Frontieres, for example, and other international groups, contact potential donors through the Internet, by email. It is, without doubt, an expeditious way to forward donations and a preferable one.

And then, there are additional ways of enlisting the help of volunteers in raising funds for charitable causes. Local branches of national charitable groups organize door-to-door campaigns with volunteers going out to knock on their neighbours' doors, requesting that they relinquish donations for a charitable receipt written then and there.

There are organized runs and walk-a-thons to raise funds for research into medical conditions benefiting the bottom lines of charitable organizations who fund disease-and-condition-specific research.

And then there are all of those newer fund-raising devices, selling tickets for specific charities that promise those who purchase the tickets that they have a fairly good chance at winning a top-of-the-line vehicle, a luxury, furnished house, an outstanding, all-equipped cottage, an all-expenses-paid exotic trip, or free food shopping for a year.

All these enticing gambits gain charities the funding they seek to ensure they remain in the game. Sometimes it seems like an never-ending game.

Where many people become irritated is when they receive, through the mail, unsolicited 'gifts' from these charities. Greeting cards, address labels, pens, notebooks, festive wrapping paper and ribbons, all geared toward obligating people who receive them to respond generously with a donation. Some people, myself among them, find this practise beyond irritating.

Even more irritating is the additional practise of sending out a pleading letter from some celebrity, counting on the weight of his/her name and reputation as a celebrity to entice you to respond with a generous donation. And just to coerce the uncertain into feelings of guilt, affixed to the letter of appeal is a taped five-cent piece.

When I send a donation to a charitable enterprise I like to convince myself they will use the money wisely in the best possible pursuits of fulfilling their humanitarian agenda. Purchasing greeting cards in bulk and then sending them on to potential gifters is not my idea of wise use of funding that comes out of my bank account.

When I receive such packets in the mail I feel no obligation to respond by forwarding on a donation; I freeze my previous habit of funding that particular charity. Which leaves me then in the position of increasing my donation amount to the charities that are left in the running.