No good deed goes unpunished....

[pb4uski]

I'm hoping that someone on this board has found a good solution to one of my pet peeves.

As background, for the last 30 or so years, I have made numerous charitable contributions, usually by writing out a slew of checks in December (more recently I have the BillPay utility from my bank make the payments).

I subsequently get all sorts of mailings from the groups I contribute to, and others, sending me calendars, notepads, return address labels, blank cards and envelopes, certificates, membership cards, etc. All stuff I don't really want and need cluttering my life and since my surname has two capital letters and DW's surname is hyphenated, inevitably in most cases anything "personalized" like return address labels is wrong and just gets recycled. At most, we keep some of the cards and notepads.

At one point I gave relatively small amounts ($25-$50) to a large number of charities. A few years ago, I scaled back the number of charities and culled out those who had higher administrative costs and gave larger amounts ($50-$100) so the total was close to the same.

I recall one year back when I was writing and mailing checks to charities getting so frustrated that I included a note specifically asking them not to send me anything other than a thank you for my contribution for that year and a reminder the following December.... but I still got the same old crap.

Has anyone out there found an effective way to contribute and avoid getting all the crap and further solicitations? I can't recall EVER sending them more money in response to another solicitation and would have figured that after 30 years they would understand it is a wasted effort, but no such luck. While the crap that they send me isn't all that valuable, between the cost of the materials, printing and postage I suspect that a good portion of my contribution gets sucked up trying to get more money out of me rather than going to the uses I intend my contribution to be used for. Frustrating

 

[brewer12345]

This is a big reason why people use donor advised trusts/funds. You can start one for as little as $5k at fido, schwab and other places.

 

[Katiek]

I haven't found a way to eliminate it, but I have found some charities that send far less mail (and no "stuff") and I tend to favor them. Also, in my experience, smaller local charities tend to be less likely to use commercial fundraisers than big national organizations - but that is just my impression.

 

[David1961]

Has anyone out there found an effective way to contribute and avoid getting all the crap and further solicitations?

Unfortunately, No. This is one of my pet peeves as well. I feel like my "reward" for contributing is to receive all kinds of junk mail asking for more money.

 

[GrayHare]

Use account starter checks, the ones without your name or address. Another way is to get a money order at a bank or post office and mail your contribution in that form.

 

[braumeister]

I love my Fidelity DAF. Gifts as small as $50 and a very user-friendly website for making them. Nearly all mine are made as "Anonymous" to eliminate the followup mailings, and it has been working very well.

Beyond that, some charities (I know the DAV is one of them) maintain something called a "pander list" that you can ask to be put on. If your name is on the list, they will not send you more than one mailing a year.

 

[ESRwannabe]

Yes I have experienced the same thing. Not with charity, but with political donations.

I usually don't vote as I know it has no impact (my state has always gone heavily to one party my entire life... I'm outnumbered to say the least...). Instead I typically donate money to whoever I want to win, as I know that will actually be helpful.

It is super annoying to me that every time I donate money I then have to endure a barrage of political junk mail for the next year or more.

 

[FUEGO]

I rarely give to charity, partly because of the reason stated by OP. Too much money wasted on me in the form of solicitations and cutesy crap that frequently gets recycled.

Once I met the president of a charity, thought it was an awesome charity and gave him all the money in my wallet. I said please don't send me anything else, I like you guys and don't want you to waste precious resources on sending me stuff. He laughed, thanked me for my honesty and I never heard anything from them (on paper or by email) other than an emailed acknowledgement of my donation for tax purposes.

Wine to Water if anyone is interested. They bring clean drinking water through a variety of means to developing nations.

 

[FIREd]

This is a big reason why people use donor advised trusts/funds. You can start one for as little as $5k at fido, schwab and other places.

+1 I always give anonymously using my Fidelity donor-advised fund. I could not care less about getting a -most likely standardized- thank you letter, so this works for me.

 

[Chuckanut]

Yep. I stopped giving to an environmental organization when I realized that most of my donation was being used to ask me for more money. Not so good.

 

[Gumby]

I get annoyed by this as well. I put all my charitable contributions in my budget at the beginning of the year and don't need a reminder, just a tax receipt. After I've been contributing every December to the same charity for the last 25 years, you'd think they would wise up and stop sending me stuff or calling me on the phone to chat me up. As Julia Roberts said to Richard Gere in Pretty Woman, "I'm a sure thing."

 

[ls99]

I help those INDIVIDUALS I know to be in trouble which is not of their doing. Never give to any organized chaos ripoff organizations, ever. I have nor been able to convince DW of her folly, and ending up with stacks of begging crap mailings.

 

[Dancer373]

I also help individuals in need/trouble and not of their own doing. I'm in a small rural community and I help the local food bank and the volunteer fire department. For all of these I get a heart felt thank you and no solicitation or mailings.

 

[LOL!]

We found an effective way to get rid of all the junk coming from charities. Instead, we get personalized, hand-written thank you notes.

The solution: Give them large amounts of money.

 

[meierlde]

Yes I have experienced the same thing. Not with charity, but with political donations.

I usually don't vote as I know it has no impact (my state has always gone heavily to one party my entire life... I'm outnumbered to say the least...). Instead I typically donate money to whoever I want to win, as I know that will actually be helpful.

It is super annoying to me that every time I donate money I then have to endure a barrage of political junk mail for the next year or more.

My father gave to the republican party in 2000. He died in 2002 and even today he gets mail asking for donations. In 2012 I finally think I got thru to the right person on the telephone to let them know that he died 10 years ago, and the phone calls appear to have stopped (we will see in 2016). So yes it appears contributing to a political candidate is like checking into a roach motel.

 

[mpeirce]

A DAF sounds like a very good idea.

We pick just one charity each year to give all our giving to. Besides keeping the followup solicitations under control, it makes it easier for us since we donate appreciated stock.

 

[pb4uski]

I've never had the gift of being smart enough to differentiate between people who are in trouble as the result of their own actions or in-actions from those who are in trouble for reasons not of their own doing.

I may check into a donor advised fund. Given my history and position in the community I'd rather not give anonymously (BTW, I'm not looking for recognition either) but would like to see the charities use the money I give for the work that they do rather than more solicitations.

I may try that "pander list" idea though.

 

[JoeWras]

DAF as others say. This is the way to go. We use Vanguard. Upside is it is easy to donate appreciated funds or stocks from our Vanguard accounts. Also simplifies things a lot at tax time.

Downside is their minimum is $500 compared to FIDOs $50. FIDO also has smaller "buy in" amounts.

But you know what? We limit the number of charities and give more to fewer. Limit it to ones we know very well, and have exemplary low overhead.

I find that the charities that send all that junk usually have way too much overhead. My dad gave to those crooks and I saw the result. He would get stickers, pads, clocks, flags, blankets, etc. About 2 items per week. Terrible.

 

[David1961]

As Julia Roberts said to Richard Gere in Pretty Woman, "I'm a sure thing."

I love that analogy!

 

[jollystomper]

It would be interesting to see how the charities that send out a lot of "clutter" rank on sites like Charity Watch or Charity Navigator. My guess is that most of them perhaps don't rank strongly in terms if minimizing administrative expenses. I tend to favor local charities, in my experience they are much more accountable and you can directly see the impact they are making.

I don't make political donations because they are all crooks. Actually, I did once, only because it was a college friend of mine who was running for mayor of a city outside of my state. Though we didn't agree on some issues he did have a lot of integrity and didn't play the "my party is always right no matter what" game, had good ideas to improve the city that crossed party lines, and was not party of the entrenched political machine. I thought he would make a good mayor, and several other college friends and I all made contributions to his campaign. So we get dragged into a "scandal", as his opponent accuses him of being funded by "people outside of the state who don't have the city's best interest at heart, trying to get favors". My friend lost a close election, and THEN I start getting solicitations from his opponent asking for contributions to pay down their campaign debt since "our donation to the other campaign showed we cared for the city". Never again...

 

[audreyh1]

It drove me nuts when I first started. The phone calls too. I started telling them no to call me - so that stopped. And for a while I stopped sending money as well.

Now we use a donor advised fund and donate anonymously.

 

[dallas27]

Gift in the name of people you dont like.


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[papadad111]

I donate cash.
I only donate to a series of very local children's' orphanages who specifically focus on kids who have medical needs and challenges.

There are some good charities out there but I know these are specifically run well and managed properly. I hand deliver the envelope of cash and the donation is essentially anonymous after that.

I only do it this way because I see first hand the work that these fine people do for kids. I have a few other friends onboard and we pool our funds at times eg- in July or August things get really lean in the orphanage budgets. In December they are flush with cash. They really appreciate the donations in summer months.

 

[msbearkeley]

I donated to help a cousin with a transplant 2 weeks ago and now that it's over, I am getting EMAILS and a text message this morning that all the funds received for the transplant were used up with pre op procedures and more money is needed.

We are scheduled to RE in November and seriously thinking we will have to lie when asked what we do for a living!


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[gerntz]

Seems many here are easily irritated. Post-gift solicitations are a quite small price to pay for the value I place on my gifts. Besides, they just increase my recycle volume.