Oh yes. Civilian feds have to deal with that bunch, too. The particular fun bit is that the CFC coordinator will usually delegate the task of personally contacting people to someone in your own office - so you’ve got someone you work with every day hassling you to donate.
I used to work for the Feds, and the CFC drove me nuts every year. Not only did we have to attend their stupid kick-off rally/meeting, but almost every work section held raffles, hot dog sales, bake sales, ad nauseum to raise money for it. And they each send out continual e-mails promoting them, which meant I was constantly getting notices that I had a new e-mail. Even worse, I always took the week after Thanksgiving off, so when I got back my inbox would be crammed with that crap; sometimes there were so many of them that it was completely filled, which always made me wonder if I had missed getting any actual work-related e-mails.
(Pretty much every post in this thread. – QFT)
In the 90s my company was heavy-handed about contribution rates – we’d get e-mails listing the percentage of “cooperation” in our departments, it was brought up at section meetings and department meetings, and for us recalcitrant ones, personal meetings. It was very heavily implied (I want to say that it was explicit, but don’t have a cite) that the gummint took our contribution rates into consideration in at least some part of their decision making process regarding contract awards. The thing that got me so fired up was that most people had a great difficulty saying no to their immediate managers, and would completely fold when the next manager up the line called them in for private conversations.
I don’t remember the specifics, but I have a mental note not to ever donate to UW. I believe it had something to do with salaries and interest-free loans given to their top executives, coupled with their expense ratios. There are four churches within two blocks of my apartment that operate food banks; I give my money directly to two of them. (Don’t ask why – I don’t know, either).
Yeah, when my husband was in the military, he used to get hassled to donate to a service-specific charity, and then we ended up needing some help ourselves…which was NOT forthcoming. While he had donated in the past, he quit donating, and he made it a point to explain why…that we had needed help, had applied, and met the guidelines, and been turned down. His mother had had to apply for a loan that she really couldn’t afford and give us the money, and then we’d had to scrimp in every way possible to pay her back.
I’d love to see a ban on all charity collections in the workplace, right down to collecting for a birthday/wedding present.
You know, I’d completely support that. I don’t see any good reason for collection money and working to mix.
I don’t give a flying fuck about all the good work the Scouts do. I still remember being 11 years old and stitting there while the den leady tried to politely explain to my mother that scouting was “not for your son” because I refused to say the damn oath “properly”.:mad: And I lived in one of those areas where the Scouts were the only game in town (other than youth groups run directly by local church) for any kind of outdoor activities and such; hence I never got to participate in any of that. I doubt my hypothetical son would be welcolme either.
It’s bigotry pure & simple, and I won’t give a single penny to support them until they change both policies. My own flesh & blood nephew is in the Scouts, but his parents know better than to ask me for anything. If I’m solicted for a donation by an actual Scout I just politely decline without saying why. The couple of times I’ve been asked by an adult leader I’ve politely told them no, briefly explained why (especially if they keep with their spiel), and gotten nothing other than an awkward stare in response.
Isn’t it funny how an organization that threw me out as a child, would still not allow me to participate as an adult because of those same policies, is pefectly willing to accept my money? :rolleyes:
oh my. Where on earth do you people work? No, really…where do you all work?
I have never experienced a request for charitable contribution from anyone I worked with, in fact at my current job no soliciting of any kind is allowed, we have to get our girl scout cookies on the downlow at the back stairs.
I have to ask, in what way would you decline to do the oath ‘properly’.
I suspect he refused to say the “god” part.
About eight years ago, a Group Leader where I worked sent out an email asking for volunteers to help build a wheelchair ramp for a disabled person. It was part of a United Way project.
So against my better judgment I volunteered. It was estimated to take three days to finish the job (Friday, Saturday, Sunday). The group leader gave out the address of the person’s home. He told everyone to bring whatever tools we think we might need.
I gather a bunch of my tools and headed to the place Friday morning. At least 15 other people from my work showed up.
The place was pretty nice… a nice ranch home in a rural area just outside Xenia, OH. While I was busting out the old concrete steps using a sledge hammer, the homeowner came out to chat with us. He was not in a wheelchair, which I thought was interesting. He walked, albeit slowly. He never said anything along the lines of “Thanks” or “I appreciate what you’re doing.” I said he had a nice place, and asked how much land he had. “We have 10 acres.”
*That *pissed me off. I knew for a fact the area he lived in had *very *high land values. I would estimate land sold for around $30K to 50K per acre in that area. Why couldn’t he sell a couple acres of land? He could then easily pay for someone to build a ramp. Here I am, busting my ass trying to build this guy a ramp, and he lived in a *much *nicer place than me. :mad:
Around noon some guy from the United Way drove up in his new Cadillac. I guess he was the project manager, and wanted to see the progress. He didn’t lift a finger to help.
After that experience, I never gave another fucking dime to the UW.
It’s entirely possible to be disabled, unable to climb stairs on occasion, and to not need a wheelchair, or not need it on a consistent basis.
It’s also entirely possible to be friends with the head of of a charitable organization/fundraiser for charity, and to mention that one would enjoy a ramp. And it’s possible for the head of that organization to ask for volunteers, and for the volunteers to think that they are helping a financially disadvantaged person by building a ramp.
I suspect that all of the above is what happened. I think that the head of the local UW group misused his authority to get a friend’s place improved.
My husband, by the way, was able to build me a decent ramp in less than about 3 hours. However, the ramp is probably not up to code, and it will probably need to be replaced in a decade. Also, it doesn’t have handrails. But I don’t fall down any more, trying to get in the front door.
Out of curiosity, did you also refuse to say the Pledge of Allegiance “properly” in school?
In any event, you are perfectly within your rights to have such a stance regarding Boy Scouts, both for you and your hypothetical son. Nevertheless, by taking such a stance, you denied yourself some opportunities–but it was apparently more important for you to remain true to your principles. This is admirable, but it’s too bad–you obviously still have residual anger over the situation.
When I was growing up, there was also no other organization that does what the Boy Scouts does. However, any discriminatory polices were simply a non-issue for me as a child, as neither atheism or homosexuality was discussed or acknowledged back then in that setting.
Today, there is still no other organization where I live that does what the Boy Scouts does. As I stated, I disagree with their policies of discriminating against homosexuals and atheists, but I can’t wait for the organization to change–assuming it ever does. I have a non-hypothetical son now. I have decided to allow and encourage him to participate in Boy Scouts, because I think that the positive benefits of Scouting outweigh the negatives. With respect to the negative aspects, I feel that I can counteract this discriminatory programming as a parent.
After all, it’s not like the Boy Scouts are the only organization around participating in such discrimination–the U.S. military still discriminates against homosexuals, and the Catholic church discriminates against homosexuals and atheists. (And I don’t mean to imply that this makes it right–just that such discrimination is pervasive even today.)
And in practice, here in New England, anyway, there’s very overt discrimination actually taking place. To this best of my knowledge, there are no witch hunts trying to ferret out gays and atheists here in Connecticut. Most Scout leaders would simply advise a boy professing either homosexual or atheist tendencies to keep this to themselves.
You are certainly within your rights to not donate to the Boy Scouts.
However, I don’t think it’s bigotry at work at the national level (though this may be a distinction without a difference). For whatever reason, homosexuality and atheism offend their religious sensibilities. They think that it is morally wrong.
This makes it very difficult to effect any changes in policy unless the BSA is forced to change or the leadership changes.
Please explain how bigotry held due to religious influences isn’t bigotry? Was the impetus for the Southern Baptists to separate from the original Baptist body (over the question of slavery) in the 19th Century bigotry or not? Was the prohibition on African ancestry preventing priesthood in the LDS prior to 1978 bigotry or not?
If not, why? How does somehow believing that God told you to treat other human beings like crap make it not-bigoted?
When my son (& daughter) were scout age, I would take them and their friends camping. I taught them some of the things they would have learned in scouts, and as an added bonus I don’t hate gays and I’m an atheist! Win/Win
Actually, he hasn’t quite stopped beating his wife yet. He’s just mostly stopped. You know, just holiday beatings. When he’s really drunk. He can’t help it!
Hypothetical: The BSA has the same policies, but applied to Black children. If you can pass for white and choose to do so, you can be a Scout. Do you encourage your son to join the BSA then? If not, why do you think it’s okay to treat atheist, agnostic, and gay youth this way?
ETA: What lesson do you think the BSA can teach your son, that you couldn’t teach yourself, that’s more important than “Discrimination is wrong, you shouldn’t ever condone it even implicitly, and sometimes you have to give up fun things to avoid supporting it”?
(Note: I’m not 100% sure that the BSA still doesn’t allow gay Scouts. Definitely not atheist or agnostic Scouts, but the homosexuality restriction might only apply to troop leaders and other adults in the organization.)
I didn’t address this earlier: I hope nobody minds that I do that now.
What kills me about UW’s support of corporate insistence on fundraising drives is that it is counterproductive to United Way. And I’m not just talking about turning people off of fundraising. Yes, it does that, but UW defenders will jump in and say “You can’t prove that!” Actually, I can, but I’ve got more data here for you to chew on.
The average fundraising campaign these days is based on a very small population of donors within an average constituency. By this I simply mean that a very small number of donors will give the lion’s share of a campaign goal. Back when I started we used to have a rule called the “80-20” rule: 80% of campaign donations are made by the top 20% of donors to a campaign. But now the rule is more like 90-10, and it could be even more like 95-5 for some campaigns. I ran the numbers here recently, and I discovered that the top 2% of our alumni donors made 91% of all alumni donations to our campaign.
What does this have to do with UW? It means that 100% participation is meaningless. Let’s say you have an office with 100 people. 5 of those people love to give to charity, and they give $1,000 a year. Ten give $200 a year. 25 give $20 a year, and the remaining 60 give nothing. This is a pretty typical distribution for charitable giving: 40% give something, but the top 5% give two-thirds of the gifts: $5,000 out of $7,500.
Now, what would happen if we spent a lot of money and time to convince the 60 non-donors in this office to make a donation? Sure, there would be a lot of grumbling, but more to the point, there wouldn’t be a lot of donations. You might get $5 from each person…if you’re lucky, because some people might give $1 or less…but let’s call it $5 per person. Those 60 people now give $300. So, after all this cajoling and forcing, we raised an extra…4%. Our office’s giving increased by a whopping 4%. After all that time and effort, we raised 4% more than what we did before.
Now let’s try a different strategy. We let everyone know about the donations, but we don’t try to force a single non-donor to change. (Of course if they do, that’s great, but it’s not our intent.) Instead, we look at the five big donors and the ten medium donors and talk to them. “Hey, thanks so much for your gifts last year. These are the great things we were able to do with your money (show projects). We could do so much more–projects X, Y, and Z–with a bit more money. Would you consider increasing your donation to ___ ?” No, we won’t be successful with everyone. But it’s not a stretch of the imagination that we convince one of the $1,000 donors to double his or her gift, convince another to add another $500, and have two of the $200 donors double their gifts. Those four people add $1,900 to our tally from last year. That’s an increase of over 25%, as opposed to our earlier strategy’s increase of 4%. By talking to only 15 people, as opposed to 100 people, we do so much better–and with so much less antagonism and anger than the attempts to secure 100%, because we talked to the people who were already inclined to give.
And that’s where UW’s strategy falls flat. Over the last ten years the successful charities have gotten a lot smarter about who they ask for money. It’s called “segmentation,” though I’ve argued that’s merely a fancy word for “ask people who are inclined to give.” There is really no traction in having companies demand 100% participation. You can’t feed a kid or build a home or do anything else with 100% participation, but you can do more with more dollars. So why not concentrate on more dollars instead of more donors? Makes perfect sense to me.
But what do I know…I’ve only been working as a professional fundraiser for ten years, published six articles, lectured for three years, presented at half a dozen international conferences, and written several software segmentation programs. If someone else can prove that you can feed more kids and fund more programs with participation rates over more dollars, I’m happy to hear it. Until then, I’ll still tell you that UW’s strategy is wrong.
Anti-gay bigotry in Scouts officially applies to leaders. Whether it applies to Scouts themselves is in question in regards to any **official **statement (our last debate on Scouts drove me to do some more research, and I could not find an official cite-worthy statement from BSA regarding a Gay Scout).
To make this germane to the OP - the United Way does NOT support Scouting in many areas any more due to the BSA’s discriminatory membership policies. This triggered a loss of funds in many Councils, and also triggered a loss of funds for the United Way. As a Scouter, I have received emails telling me how to designate any UW donations to the Scouts if I work for a company that “supports” the United Way. That prevents any fungible fund issues. The NRA has a non-profit arm as well, and they send out notices to their members on how to designate funds to the NRA if you are making your United Way pledge too.
I shouldn’t have said it that it wasn’t bigotry. It is. Those who hold these views don’t see it as bigotry, though, because they see it terms of morality. I do not agree with these views–I am simply restating what I understand to be their stated reason for objecting to gays in Boy Scouts. I personally think it’s a load of crap.
There’s a lot more to Boy Scouts than camping–and a few things taught to some kids on a campout similar to what they would have learned in Scouts is a poor substitute, IMHO.
No.
I don’t think it’s OK. On the other hand, unlike someone’s race, one’s religious views or sexual orientation is not on display to the world. Someone can be an atheist or a homosexual, and keep this to themselves. I personally don’t think that my religious views are anybody’s business but my own.
Good question. I’m not sure I have a good answer. One answer might be that people have to make compromises at times in life. I disagreed with the similar policy of the U.S. military, but this did not prevent me from serving. I also disagree with many teachings of the Catholic church (including those discriminating against homosexuality), but this did not prevent me from going to my father’s funeral mass. Should I have stood outside the church during my father’s funeral to avoid condoning these teachings even implicitly?
I am also aware that gays have served and continue to serve in the U.S. military and the Catholic Church while “in the closet,” and I’m sure the same thing happens in Boy Scouts. I can at least not participate in any personal, overt discrimination–I would never tell a boy that “Scouting was not for them” because of their religious beliefs (or lack thereof), or their sexual orientation.
I believe it applies to Scouts as well as leaders.
No bigot in history has ever sat down and said, “I think I’ll revel in my bigotry today.” Every bigot sees their bigotry in terms of morality. The people opposed to segregation or “miscegenation” saw it in terms of morality. The medieval Christians in Spain who killed, forcibly converted, or drove into the sea every Muslim and Jew in the entire peninsula saw it in terms of morality. Both sides of the great European religious wars saw it in terms of morality. Nobody sits down and decides to intimidate and discriminate against another race, religion, culture, orientation, whatever because they want to get some kicks. They ALL do it because they think it’s the right thing to do.
Their motivations are moot. Their actions are immoral, regardless of their feelings about those actions.
Okay, what if they’d allow Black boys to be Scouts as long as they wore whiteface? Why is it okay for atheist and agnostic and gay boys to have to lie about who they are in order to participate? (And the BSA definitely require you to be explicitly religious–there’s no way to just “not mention” being an atheist. You do actually have to lie about it.)
Sure, people have to compromise all the time, and that’s often a good thing. But that’s when both parties give something up so that everyone can benefit. By sending your son to the BSA, you’re allowing someone else to be discriminated against so that your son can benefit. That’s not exactly the same thing.
Not really a good parallel. I’m assuming that while you attended, you didn’t *participate *in the Mass (e.g., receive Communion). And while you can go camping with your son yourself–or join a different BSA-like organization if there’s one in your area–you can’t have more than one funeral for your father.