A lot of mine have been mentioned but I also never give anything to anyone at an intersection. Don’t intercept the flow of traffic, asshole! Especially when it’s some pissant little town that I am just passing through and will never come back to ever again.
The United Way.
Boy Scouts.
Salvation Army
Any group which I have reason to believe is a front for Jews For Jesus. (I live in an area with a lot of Soviet Jewish immigrants. J4Js pop up in all kinds of guises)
Re The Salvation Army
One of my favorite parables has G-d reprimanding Abraham after he refused to give food to a man who followed another faith “You couldn’t put up with him not believing in Me for an hour? I put up with it his whole life! I never said ‘Feed the hungry only if they agree with you.’ I just said ‘feed the hungry.’ Now, go find that man, apologize and give him a meal.”
I don’t give to any charity that solicits me over the phone or in person. I also don’t give to Salvation Army because the bells make my head ache, and I don’t give to anyone who collects money at intersections. Collecting money at intersections ties up traffic, but even worse, it’s dangerous. Drivers need to pay attention to driving. Pedestrians don’t need to be darting out into traffic.
Actually, I won’t buy anything from someone who solicits me in person or over the phone, or at an intersection, either.
It’s great to see the almost universal hatred for PETA. A truly horrible organization on lots of levels.
Plus, who wants to be labeled as a PETAphile?
Add me to the list that won’t donate to United Way because of this (and their overhead-heavy structure and business policies). My husband’s company is terrible for strongarm tactics - “You have to donate for our department to get to 100% - you’re the only holdout” kind of bullshit. It makes him very angry for a variety of reason, one of which is privacy - it’s no one else’s goddamned business if we donate to United Way or not.
A local homeless charity is also on my “Do Not Donate” list (the Mustard Seed); I donated to them one year, and after repeatedly asking them to stop soliciting me, they would not do so. That was the last money they will ever get from me.
I’ve donated fifteen gallons of blood. I figure that’s enough good karma that I don’t have to give to charities of dubious integrity.
Boy Scouts.
Probably irrational, I will admit. You be the judge. Years ago at one of my places of employment, a large corporate customer, on whom we depended for a large percentage of our income, had a CEO whose son became a Boy Scout. Sitting in his wealthy, exclusive hamlet, CEO daddy decided to help the troop win some scouting award, so he put the squeeze on his employees and the employees of his company’s vendors (which is where I worked) to donate rather large sums of money to the Boy Scouts. The thinly veiled threat from our company leadership was that we’d all lose our jobs if we didn’t donate some of our rather meager salary to this guy’s fund raising project. The Boy Scouts were not broke, by the way.
We were told to be “good corporate citizens” and go along with it. We hated it. We hated the CEO. We hated his company and refused to buy their products. We hated the Boy Scouts. We got nothing for our donations, except the ability to keep our jobs.
At least with the Girl Scouts we got cookies!
I was going to ask if there are agencies you’ll donate blood to, and others you won’t, but blood donation (at least in the US) seems to be lots of geographically divided monopolies.
PETA is definitely on my list. Love the furry little animals but can’t stand PETA and their tactics.
Depending on your definition of “giving to charity”, I don’t donate blood any longer. An incompetent nurse permanently dorked up my left inner elbow the last time I went, years ago, and I have no desire to run the odds for the other arm.
I never give money to corner beggars, it just creates more beggars.
Support you local Lions club. 100% of any money they raise goes to whatever they are raising it for. In fact Lions members pay for the privilege to volunteer and this money goes towards running the organisation.
Yeah, I can’t donate anymore, either - I’ve been on blood thinners for a couple of years. Kinda sucks, as I really liked being able to donate.