It’s really galling that when I give my annual donation orgs keep coming back almost weekly wanting me to give monthly, or just give more. I am rethinking how I donate.
I am done donating money outside of my community.
Why? Because it finally has sunk into me that donating today is opening a door to harassment and when it comes to my donations, waste.
Connie and I never were big donors. We donated small amounts across organizations we believed in, sometimes national political candidates, and we did it one time a year. That was it.
Since she went into memory care, then passed, I have continued with that sort of giving, but, I’ve come to the conclusion that not only is my annual donation not respected, it’s used to keep asking me for more money.
Let’s take Org A. I give $250 a year to Org A. But it’s not enough. Almost weekly I get snail mail or on-line solicitations from Org A wanting me to donate monthly, or even more often. I figure that by the time you add up labor, postage for snail mail, my $250 never really goes to help the organization do whatever it does that attracted me to it in the first place.
Even worse, these organizations either sell or pass my name on to others.
We are being buried in fund-raising. I love elephants. I want to see them saved. I want to see abused dogs, cats and other animals saved. But as long as humans are starving, I’m not going to donate on-line for animals. It’s not that I don’t care, it’s just that I don’t have big piles of cash stacked up around the apartment. If I give it will be to a local shelter.
It’s dawned on me that the only way to avoid this deluge of “more, more and more” is to not give in the first place.
So, when it comes time to renew about a half-dozen of our annual donations, I won’t.
When I get texts from politicians I type in “stop” or “end.”
What will I do? I will seek out good causes down the street, in our community, and I will donate to them.
I also plan to contact each organization I have donated to and tell them exactly why I won’t be sending in my annual donation. If any of them get back to me and promise not to send me weekly or monthly pleas for more I may reconsider. I doubt that will happen.
It’s not that I don’t care. It’s that I don’t like being respected. I am old. I am retired. I can’t possibly give what these organizations want. I am tired of the fire-house barrage of pleas.
Call me a grumpy old man, but so it goes….
Rich Heiland is a retired journalist and semi-retired consultant, trainer and public speaker. During his journalism career he was a reporter, editor, publisher, college instructor, part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning team and a National Newspaper Association Columnist of the Year honoree. He lives in West Chester, PA and can be reached at [email protected].