Do you give to charities that solicit for donations by telemarketing or by stopping people on the sidewalk?
I don’t. I don’t like to be harassed as I’m walking down the street and the techniques used are often very aggressive.
Just this afternoon, I overhead an experienced fundraiser explain to a newbie: “As long as you don’t touch them, you’re not breaking any laws. So get right in their way!”
But the charities are for legitimate causes that I support. The Humane Society or Greenpeace, for example. Are these fundraising techniques doing more harm than good?
MADD Canada pays a company to fundraise for them. IIRC, the company gets 70% of all money that they raise on behalf of MADD Canada. How that’s legal I’ll never know.
Anybody who calls me for a donation gets cussed at. A lot. I treat them the same way I do any other telemarketer. Ditto anybody who interferes with my free passage. One of these days I’m going to punch one of those annoying little pests right in the chops for blocking my way to beg for money. Fuck you, and fuck your cause!
Any donation I make to any cause is done and always will be done anonymously and secretly. And without coercion.
Nope. I do not have a landline for going on 7 years, so telemarketers are folks I no longer have to deal with. IMHO I am generous to charities that I have investigated and feel are using money they receive in a way that I am comfortable with. I am a proud supporter of my local public radio stations and two local animal shelters. I also support Phipps Conservatory http://www.phipps.conservatory.org/ and several local museums. Politically, I support a few candidates who, although they always lose, share my views. I am a long time member of NORML.
That pretty much uses up my charity spending dollars.
Anything but ads in print, online or on TV (or an in-person telethon or fundraiser that doesn’t involve people approaching passers-by) is annoying. I don’t like people coming to the door, stopping me on the street or calling me up. Not only is it usually done in a rude manner, all require some sort of verification to prove that they are who they say they are (or that the charity is legit). Except local Girl Scouts and things. They’re okay.
I support causes I see fit to support. Having worked for a large international non-profit [ something about wish granting ] I know and understand where the struggling charities are coming from when annual appeal time comes around. However, I pick and choose which ones I give to and which ones I don’t.
I support nature conservancies, environmental groups, and american cancer society.
When I was younger I never understood why some really rich people that made huge donations always wanted to remain anonymous. I thought they were just trying to be very humble about the whole thing.
Now being older I understand completely. Once they know who you are and that you gave money once, they along with every other charity out there will nag you and nag you and nag you for more and more and more money until your dying day.
Firemans Ball Telemarketers can all burn in hell.
Me: Hello
FBT: blah blah blah how much would you like to donate
Me: Nothing thank you
FBT: Oh c’mon how about I put you down for 50
Me: I’m putting myself though college right now, I don’t have any spare money
FBT: Well, let’s call it $40 then.
Me: No, I told you I don’t have any extra money, I’m not going to donate
FBT: How about this, I’ll put you down for $20, and you won’t have to pay now, we’ll just send you a bill
Me: <Click>
ugh
Though I do like the two other responses I’ve heard here
FBT :Blah blah blah, how much you would like to donate
Doper Response 1: I already donated a brother.
Doper Response 2: When is the ball?
FBT: Huh?
DR2: You said I was donating money for a ball, when is it, I’d like to go?
FBT: Huh?
Being a broadcaster, journalist and bomb-throwing leftist, I (naturally) support my local NPR station (in my case that’s KUNC, Greely/Fort Collins) and ever since I took out a sustaining membership (that means it’s monthly, forever) I’m not nearly as irritated by all of those begathons they run.
I’ve been accosted on the street only once, by some save-the-wildlife group that I normally agree with. It happened in Fort Collins. I wanted more information, but the guy insisted that if I was truly committed, I had to pony up right then and there, and he started talking credit card. I took a brochure, told him to get lost, then wrote to the address on the brochure. Never heard back. Guess I’m not as committed to wildlife as I thought.
I donate when my private high school calls, since I was given financial aid while I was there. Otherwise, no.
I know someone who did the door-to-door “save the environment” thing, I think her cut was something like 40%. Those guys hit my university’s campus sometimes, I always wonder why security doesn’t clear them off. I personally would rather talk to the hair salon guys, at least they don’t make $ by pretending to save the world.
Just tell them you didn’t think firemen had any balls. With calls like these, don’t let them get into spiels. Say no, I am not interested in donating and then hang up.
I’m an irritable hermit – I’ve got both ‘No Trespassing’ and ‘No Soliciting’ signs up on my fence. Apparently, the yahoos who can’t find better work think these don’t apply to them, and will come right up to my door and wake me up on Saturday mornings. This does not put me in a receptive mood, to say the least.
The only ones who DON’T get yelled at are the Girl/Boy Scouts, and that’s IF – and ONLY if – it’s the kid at the door. If it’s Mom or Dad doing the work for the kid, they get nothin’. If it’s the kid themself I’ll scrape up a few bucks, but it’s gotta be the kid doing the work. I despise parents who insist that Junior or Princess can’t handle their own work.
If a charity calls me or knocks on my door, they’re off my list AND I place a call to complain to their headquarters. I donate to the Red Cross, because they understand the word ‘privacy’. I donate to a local AIDS support group, for the same reason. I used to donate to PBS, but they started calling us directly and got very pushy about it, so pfft! – off the list.
I used to donate to the Firefighters Council, until I found out that they had outsourced the work to a call center that pocketed some huge amount of the proceeds. Nowadays I try to donate directly (my father-in-law is a firefighter) whenever I see them on the street corners with their boots collecting pennies. I don’t know if that happens in other places, but it’s pretty common around here.
Hm. I’m more anti-social than I thought, it appears.
In my experience, those calling on behalf of the firefighters, sheriffs, police officers, narcotics enforcement officers, etc. are never actually uniformed officers, but instead are calling from a telemarketing firm that will keep about 85% of the money and give only 15% to the cause. So, if I’m bored, I make a point of questioning them at length as to how the contribution will be allocated, and at the end suggest that a direct contribution would be more efficient. (One caller mentioned that the money would be spent on fire prevention education and as he started by reminding me that I should check my smoke detector batteries, I’ll bet that they consider the telemarketing calls themselves a legitimate educational expense.)
I’m not horribly pestered by charity solicitors, I guess since the ones I give to are pretty stringent about not sharing donor pool info. Also, the Telezapper and not giving over the phone helps. It’s either through non-UW payroll deduction or web donation. The street solicitors in Vancouver just hold up their Amnesty/SPCA/Greenpeace clipboard and smile like cheery prostitutes on the far reaches of the sidewalk and don’t try to crawl up your face. I won’t give that way though, since I don’t want to do anything to encourage their proliferation.
I’ve found from about 60-85% is usually going to the telemarketers. I love when I get phone calls on behalf of a group 1800 miles away, only to find out that $7.50 of my $50 donation would go to the actual firefighters group.
I never fall for telephone solicitations. I simply say “I do not make contributions by telephone” and hang up. Fortunately we don’t get a lot of door-to-door around here.
I usually dont mind the types that hang out in front of the supermarket and try to attract the attention of people going in and out of the store. At least, all the ones I meet take a “no thanks” for an answer.
The telemarketers, annoy me the most. I try not to be rude, though, because the poor schlepp on the other end of the phone is just a minimum wage worker trying to feed the kids. After the second “no thanks”, I hang up on them.
Aggressive scolicitors, such as people standing at the tops of escalators right in front of you as you try to get off the damn thing. Pisses me right off because you can’t even change course to avoid them.
Same thing happened last weekend at the supermarket. A store employee (!) stands on the inside at the end of a long corridor that you have to walk through to get inside the store. Once you’re half way inside and realize you’re in the crosshairs, there is no turning back because there is a line of people behind you trying to get in.
And if she does manage to get some poor sucker to stop and listen to the sales pitch for raffle tickets or whatever, the poor sucker causes the pedestrian equivalent of a sixteen car pile-up at the store entry-way.
Those GD MF’s in the intersections interferring with traffic!! I HATE those guys! Get the F*#K out of the road.
Bastards. You think your little yellow bucket makes an impression on me or you walking to my drivers window pressures me? Me? Get the hell away from my truck.
Pheww. I feel better. Thanks.
] I know and understand where the struggling charities are coming from when annual appeal time comes around. However, I pick and choose which ones I give to and which ones I don’t.