Dear $(CharityName),

[jducoeur]

I just received your most recent letter, dunning me for a renewal of my "membership". It's the fourth time you've sent me one of these in the past couple of months. I would like to call your attention to a few facts.

I am not a "member" of your organization as far as I am concerned. I thought you were doing good work, so I sent you some money. That was not intended to be construed as a desire for permanent lifetime membership, nor was it intended to commit me to sending you as much money again next year -- much less the increasing amounts every year that you seem to believe yourselves entitled to. It *certainly* was not intended as a request for letters trying to guilt-trip me, nor for patronizing notes about "did I forget?" Such things do little to endear you to me, nor to ensure future donations.

Kindly pay more attention in the future, and do not over-interpret my gifts. They are exactly that -- gifts, nothing more. Attempts to misconstrue them otherwise will send my dollars to some other deserving fund, of which there are plenty.

(Which I suppose isn't as true as I would like -- a remarkably large percentage of charities play this irritating "membership" game these days. And it's not even fun to watch the plaintive letters pouring in, the way that it is to watch my TV Guide subscription expire. But I'm getting rather fed up with it...)

Comments

[orlacarey.livejournal.com]

When I was in high school I foolishly donated once to the local public television station. Fifteen years later (and after 3 moves) my parents are still getting letters from that station asking me for more money.

I've gotten to the point that if I ever make the mistake of donating to a public broadcasting group again I will tell them that if I recieve even one piece of junk mail from them I will never donate again. At this point they've exceeded the amount of money I donated by such an amount that it's criminal.

[kelevcat.livejournal.com]

I have the same complaint. Whenever I donate money I always tell them not to put me on any mailing lists or send me any literature. When I worked at Lotus, they had a list of 700 organizations to which you could make donations through payroll deductions. Aside from the benefits of not missing a few dollars from each paycheck and the fact that Lotus matched the donations, I always said one of the biggest benefits was that the donations were essentially anonymous, so I never received any mail from any organizations.

If you get totally fed up, there are donation clearinghouses that allow for anonymous donations. A couple I know of are JustGive.org and NetworkForGood.org (aka Helping.org). The downside is they take a small percentage of your donation for administrative fees (which may be less than what the organization would spend on pestering you).

[jducoeur]

Interesting -- I had no idea those existed, but I suppose that if there's a market opportunity, someone will step into it. Thanks; I'll look into that...