Humane Society of the United States, will you PLEASE stop sending me crap???

The BBQ Pit
1

Okay, so I happened upon one of your appeals around Christmas time last year, and in a spurt of seasonal Good Will to Animals sentiment, I stupidly sent you a check.

Ever since then I have been bombarded with crap, from you and all your fellow animal-oriented charities with whom you decided to share my name and address. (Weirdly enough, you also passed it along to the Disabled Veterans – what’s up with that?) And it’s no good trying to deny you were the source of this plague, because I deliberately add different apartment numbers to my address whenever I make donations/join clubs/request info from an organization, and I know damn well that “Apt 33-C” went to you.

Since that donation I have received an unending series of appeals for more funds – fine, I rather expected that, pictures of abandonned/mistreated animals to wrench at my heartstrings, check.

What I did not expect was the flow of useless crap ‘presents’ that you hope will guilt me into sending you larger amounts of money. What kind of crap? Well, so far there have been (I think this list is just from your particular organization, mind you, though I’m also getting lesser amounts of the cheaper items from your sister orgs):

  • at least a dozen mailings of a handful of greeting cards, usually with sickeningly cutesy anthropomorphic kitten & puppy shots

  • two t-shirts I wouldn’t be caught dead wearing

  • a zillion ‘ornamental’ stickers of sleeping kittens and such

  • a travel mug with “I (heart) animals” on it. Oh, yeah, I feel the need to boast about that regularly, it’s such a rare trait.

  • ‘desk-top’ calculator

  • a mini-sewing kit

  • a regular mug – this one emblazed with not just the usual ugly art, but also with MY full name, so I couldn’t even palm it off on a garage sale or the like without shaming myself, I had to smash it into small pieces before burying it in the trash bag.

  • a mini-travel alarm clock/thermometer (this was actually rather nice, but I already had two of them)

  • a key ring with a 50th anniversary tribute to yourself stamped out of some gold-colored cheap metal

  • enough ‘address stickers’ – complete with my bogus apartment number – to last me the rest of this century.
    In other words, you have almost certainly spent every single cent of the money I sent you on creating/buying this crap and mailing it to me!!!
    What about those starving animals I was supposed to be helping? The ones needing shots and spaying and other operations? Remember them?

When I gave you money it was with the idea that at least some of it would be put to good use. If I wanted a never-ending flow of crap sent to me, hell, all I’d have to do is send out ‘tell me more’ letters to an assortment of religions or click reply on some spam.

You have guaranteed that I will NEVER make another donation to a national animal charity. That animal-oriented-charity money you are begging for? This year I gave some of it to the nearest no-kill shelter and the rest to a group that feeds/traps/spays/releases feral cats.

And you know what? They actually used the money to buy food and drugs and veterinary services, and the only thing they’ve inflicted on me in return was a sincere thank you when I handed over the money.

So for god’s sake, take me off your ‘crap gift of the month’ mailing list, right? You’ve already wasted every cent of what I gave you, now you are wasting the money you got from others – and it isn’t accomplishing a thing.

So stop already!

2

At Christmas time, I gave money to three charities: RIF, the ASPCA, and UNICEF. All have now sent me at least one mailing. It occured to me to wonder, when I received the latest, if my money would be spent entirely by these organizations over the next year or two on production and postage of mailings asking me for more money.

3

As you probably know, many charities make additional money from selling their mailing lists of “known contributors”, who are of high value as they have been known to contribute (be a soft touch?).

Also, (no cite, but…) IIRC research indicates that past contributors are also more likely to contribute again in the future than the public in general.

This leads to the frustrating behavior you’ve seen.

A couple years ago this happened to me. I think those Thanksgiving Dinner people, were the original culprits, or maybe the AIDS marathon, but anyway, I was caught in a bind between no longer contributing to causes I wanted to support, or getting all that crap.

My solution: money orders with no identifying information about myself written in. I get to give, and I get the receipt for tax purposes, but they have no way of putting me on the dreaded "hit"list. Seems to have worked so far.

4

I must admit that I’ll use every one of those guilt gifts. Usually I won’t contribute, either. I figure that the gifts are already paid for, and my not using them or throwing them away will not put money back in the charity’s coffers.

I also wonder at how much of my contribution goes towards the actual charity, but then I look at websites offering promotional items, and I realize how very cheaply some of this stuff is made.

Sometimes, when I’m feeling generous, I go down to our local Humane Society and stuff some bills into their jars. Sometimes I sponsor a cat for adoption, or sponsor its medical treatment. I really can’t adopt another cat.

5

I hear you SBS, loud and clear.

Almost two years ago, I made a donation to the Fund for Animals in honor of my friend’s dead mother. As a result of said donation in her honor, the Fund for Animals has managed to really piss me off by selling my name to any other environmental/animal rights charity that they could. I’m getting mail from…
Oceana
Nature Conservancy
Heifers, Int.
Doris Day Animal League
Farm Sanctuary
Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine
In Defense of Animals
Tiger Haven
The Jane Goodall Institute
Best Friends Animal Sanctuary
Animal Legal Defense Fund
The Otter Project
National Wildlife Federation
Wild Animal Orphanage
National Anti-Vivisection Society
Animal Protection Institute
Defenders of Wildlife
…you name it. I have more address labels with pictures of baby seals on them than you could shake a stick at. So on behalf of my friend’s dead mother, thank you, Fund for Animals, a/k/a ANIMAL RIGHTS PIMPS! I am not anti-animal rights, I am just anti-the selling of my personal information without my knowledge/consent. I’d expect that from a Target or an Amazon. But a charity?

The piece de resistance was the pre-recorded message from the Executive Vice president on my answering machine, asking me to respond to the “Membership Renewal” letter I will be receiving shortly. I will not be “renewing” my “membership” with his organization because I do not have one. I made a one-time gift in honor of a woman who loved animals, and have paid quite handsomely for it, since his organization sold me up the river to any humane or environmental charity that it could. I am very particular as to the charities to which I actively donate, and this has soured me on giving anything to any similar organization as a result. For as much as they claim to need money to help animals in need, they certainly have enough to throw around in order to be able to bombard me with unsolicited junk mail (yes, unwanted mail hitting me up for money comes under the category of junk in my book) and phone calls.

6

And then came the United Way, where you can specify whether you want your name given to the recipient and have payroll deduction. (Spare me all the crap about their officers salaries and practices - I read also)

It also occurs to me that you might want to send the money order and give them someone’s name and address who you consider appropriate for receiving this mail, you know, make a gift in honor of someone.

7

A couple points, from the perspective of a local humane society (I’m the guy that processes donations):

  1. This is a good rant, but have you asked HSUS to take your name off their mailing list? Absent that, your rant kind of falls flat for me. This website should allow you to get your name removed.
  2. Given the amount of work you go into to track who sells your address to whom, I’m astonished that you don’t include the simple note, “Please do not give my contact information to other organizations,” on your membership form. This should take care of the problem with reputable charities.
  3. Although we never sell or give away our donor information, we do occasionally purchase lists of donors to relevant causes, such as HSUS. For us, it’s a cost/benefit thing: if we need to do a major fundraising drive, our money is much better spent asking for new donations from folks we KNOW are friendly to animal welfare causes than asking for new donations from random members of the public. We of course honor any requests not to receive future mailings, and we only use a list once, in order not to piss people off.
  4. Thank you for donating to the cause, and I’m absolutely not going to tell you where you ought to give your money. I just want to mention that you may want to take a look into the difference between “no-kill” and “kill” shelters, if you haven’t already done so. No-kill shelters avoid euthanasia by turning animals away, and often by accepting only the most adoptable animals. Some of them are good, but some of them warehouse animals for years at a time and are horrific places if you walk through them. “Kill” shelters, more often called “open-access” shelters, never turn an animal away: we never force an animal out onto the streets. When we euthanize, it’s not because we enjoy it; it’s because the animals have nowhere else to go, including no room at the limited-access or “no-kill” shelters. (I just like to soapbox about that from time to time).
  5. Finally, do consider that HSUS sends all these gadgets becasue b]studies show they work**. They’re not trying to spend all your donation on gadgets; rather, they’re trying to make a fundraising investment that’ll be returned to them several times over. If you tell them to take you off their list, they’ll appreciate knowing that in your case their gamble won’t pay off. HSUS does plenty of good educational work; we’ve used their services a lot at our organization.

Daniel

8

A few years back, we donated $100 to our local PBS Station. and about two weeks later we were thanked for out donation and asked if we would like to give another $50 dollars. Hello! If I was going to give a $150 total, I would have given it in the original amount. :rolleyes:

9

And yet, if it didn’t work on some people, they wouldn’t do it.

That said, I hate the hard sell approach in fundraising. The closest I come to hard-sell is in sending people membership renewal letters in which I remind them how much they donated last time and asking them (no matter what their last donation was) to consider an even more generous membership donation this year. I figure that’s a way of asking for extra moolah without pissing folks off.

Daniel

10

It was Habitat for Humanity that did it to me. But I’m keeping and using all those address labels I got from all those other organizations.

I wish I’d gotten some of the other neat stuff you got though (t-shirt, mug).

When I got my “renewal” note from HfH, I looked real close, and there on the BACK of the request, in small letters, was the notice “Please do not share my address with other charities” (or something like that.)

I think Habitat for Humanity is a great organization, but I’m a little soured on them for now.