Charities that sell your address (grumpy)

The BBQ Pit
#1

I’ve helped work on a couple of Habitat for Humanity houses, and I think the organization does great work. So last year, when I couldn’t work on a house for them, I decided to send them money instead. Fine, so far.

Then the requests for money from OTHER charities start coming in. I’ve gotten requests from all kinds of organizations, from the Alzheimer’s Association to some charity for Native American children. Everybody sends me SOMETHING (usually address labels, but I’ve gotten 3 calendars also), in the hopes of guilting me into sending them cash.

Well, it’s not going to happen. Moreover, there’s a good chance I’m not going to send any more traceable money to HfH either, since they almost have to be the source of this barrage of stuff.

Jeezopete, I’m not made of money. I’m unemployed, for heaven’s sake. I know there’s plenty of worthy charities out there, but don’t try to make me give money by sending me a sheet of address labels I could run off on my own printer.

This just gripes me.

#2

Jeez, sorry about the double post! Now I’m even grumpier.

#3

I work for a not-for-profit organization, we trade our membership lists with other like-minded NPOs. But we do not sell the lists to anyone, I doubt that HfH sold the list.

I would advise you to tell HfH not to trade or sell your info to anyone else.

#4

Apologies! I just assumed (venally) that membership lists were sold rather than traded.

If they had a spot to check on the form that said “Do not share my address with others” or something similar, I’d have checked it. My personal opinion is that opt-out should be the default, not opt-in.

#5

So, 5, if I barter for drugs, is it OK?

Giving away donor names is a sleazy thing to do, whether the recompense is money or another list of easy marks.

#6

Throw the shit away - it’s not like they are calling you.

#7

I too am irritated by the exact same issue the OP has. I’ve been living in the same place for years, and I managed to avoid receiving advertisments, for the most part. I always made sure, when I gave my adress to any company, to check whether or not they could sell/trade/give my adress to third parties, or their affiliates companies, and always insisted (sometimes in written form) than my adress shouldn’t be used for anything not related to the purchase/contract/whatever I was doing/signing/whatevering and that it shouldn’t be disclosed to any third party.
Halas, I just didn’t think about making this point clear with charities and NGO, and I receive manyrequests for money, subscriptions, guilty-loaded “gifts” (you can keep them, but please consider sending some money in exchange for such and such worthy cause). It’s not devastating my life, but I’m still irritated. I think I can somehow figure out by myself to whom I want to give money (and anyway, currently, I’m not in a position to do so), and how to get in touch with some association working on whatever issue I think is worthy. I really disliked to discover that these organizations acted like for-profit corporations do, and sold/traded their adresses lists.
Finally, exchanges after exchanges these traded adresses eventually find their way beyond the realm of charities. For instance, catholic associations/NGOs got my adress this way (from some other non-catholic NGO) . Some time later, I began to receive advertisment for catholic magazines which had nothing to do with charities, (and since i’m an atheist, I don’t have the slightest interest in suscribing to such magazines). Then, I began to receive offers of subscriptions for other mainstream magazines, newspapers, etc…Short of calling each of them and asking them to remove my adress from their listing, I’m pretty certain that quickly I would have had my mailbox filled with mails from every possible kind of company trying to sell me sofas, insurances or appartments. Exactly what I always tried to avoid.