Is it bad if I give a donation to a charity, then find myself getting a little angry when they keep coming back for more money month after month after month???
So a couple of months ago, Sara and I made a small donation to Unicef to help with the relief efforts in Haiti. It was only like $25 or something, but it was the best that we could do at the time, and besides, we were mainly doing it to take advantage of an employer match that had been offered, so our $25 became an easy $50. Anyways, that was around mid-January, and since then we’ve been regularly receiving solicitations from Unicef asking for more donations. E-mail and postal mail alike, and they’re not even specifically asking for Haiti donations anymore – these are just solicitations for general donations into their charitable funds.
Now I cut the e-mail one off pretty quick because there was an unsubscribe link buried at the bottom, but I haven’t the foggiest idea how to get off of the paper one. Maybe just not donate long enough and eventually they’ll give up? Not likely, considering the volume of alumni mail from Sara’s alma mater and other organizations that I’ve donated to over the years that keeps following us no matter where we move! Sure, they act like they’re just trying to keep their valued friends in the loop about campus happenings, but then what’s the prepaid envelope for that’s stapled to the back cover?
I think what really burns me up about this kind of thing is that it just really makes me wonder how much of my donation actually went to help earthquake victims, vs. marketing costs to send out letters asking for larger donations. I know they’re supposed to disclose their administrative costs somewhere and maybe all of these letters are insignificant compared to the donations that they get back in return … maybe it’s kind of like e-mail SPAM where 99.9% of people just ignore them, but the costs are so ridiculously low that it’s worth it just for the 0.1% that do respond. I see that they did use “non-profit” postage, and it might be kind of telling that the minimum contribution amount is almost half again as much as my original donation…
I don’t know … maybe it wouldn’t be very productive for them, but I guess I just wish that they’d let me do the asking and donate whenever I’m able to financially. I can go on your website to submit an online payment when I’m ready, and you could save the 50-cents or whatever it costs to print that full-color, glossy magazine about cancer research and instead use that money to help find a cure for cancer, too! Why does making a single donation have to automatically land me on their donation drive mailing list for life?
Then again, maybe I’m the minority and most people who donate want to get all of those updates and ways to send further contributions. I’m sure that if you asked any non-profit, they’d tell you that their fundraising efforts are both minimal and vital, but I’d still love to know … just how many glossy pamphlets do you have to send me before my $25 donation is negligible???