How to Donate to Charity Without Receiving Tons of Junk Mail
Do you know the saying: “No good deed goes unpunished”? When you donate to charity, it may seem like you are doomed to incitement to hell. Anyone who has ever donated money to a cause has probably received these “gifts” address tags in the mail a few months later (for all the letters you don’t write and the bills you pay automatically). Or have learned to check persistent phone calls from telemarketing benefactors. Or they sighed every time they threw a letter urging them to increase their monthly donation in an unopened trash can.
Charities can seem overly aggressive when it comes to marketing, but without constant contributions from donors like you, most of them would not survive, so we should probably cut them a little more than we could with other groups. urging us to repeatedly ask for money (cough alumni cough associations ). However, you don’t have to just put up with endless emails and mountains of letters if they really bother you. Here are the steps you can take to keep your requests to a minimum.
Choose the right charities
Not all charities are the same when it comes to collecting donations after donations. Please read the organization’s privacy policy before submitting your credit card information or submitting this check. Or better yet, use the Charity Navigator , which evaluates charities’ privacy policies. For any charity, you can quickly see which ones clearly state that they do not: a) sell or transfer your personal information, or b) send out donor mailings on behalf of other organizations. Likewise, the Charity Navigator Legend tells you if the charity doesn’t have this clear privacy policy or if you need to opt out of mailing and sharing lists.
If an organization requires you to opt out, be sure to check the box or button that allows you to do so when you donate.
Remove yourself from phone and mailing lists
General tips for getting rid of junk mail and telemarketing can also help when you are dealing with a surplus of charity mail and phone calls. However, with charities, you may have to take additional steps.
For example, Charity Navigator advises that when you tell the Direct Marketing Association that you do not want to receive spam, you must indicate that it includes mail from both commercial and charitable organizations. Otherwise, the DMA will just put you on its commercial list only.
To ask the charity to stop mailing you directly, consider writing “Remove me from the mailing list” on the response card and mail it back to the charity. BBB Consumer Education advises :
If you write to a charity asking them not to mail you, be sure to send a return card that is included with your appeal so that the charity can easily identify you. If you write to eliminate duplicate calls (with slight variations in your name or address), please post all labels with their variations. The charity appeal envelope that you wrote “Remove my name” or “return to the sender” and put it in the mailbox will not be delivered to the charity unless you add postage, as the non-commercial postage that charities use will not pay for the return.
Also, as we noted earlier :
You should register on the national “do not call” list if you have not already done so. Companies are prohibited from continuing to call you if you are on this list and have verbally asked them not to call you at least once. Unfortunately, this is not illegal for non-profit organizations. But most nonprofits run seasonal campaigns, so at least your leadership will be put on hold for three to 11 months.
Even when dealing with a nonprofit organization, you should ask the manager and tell him that you have repeatedly asked to be placed on the Do Not Call list. Keep in mind that the previous caller may not have done their job and deleted you, and this new, innocent caller gets all the blame. The manager needs to resolve these kinds of customer issues so that callers can keep dialing.
If a nonprofit calls for a donation and you feel tempted to donate, it’s also best to donate directly: the telemarketers who call are likely a percentage of your donation – and it can be quite large. … Your money will go even further to the good of the cause if you politely decline over the phone and then donate directly to charity.
Divide your donations among fewer charities
Rather than donating small amounts to a few charities, donate more to select organizations. Not only does this help most of your donation go to work (instead of being eaten up by transaction costs), but it can also prevent your information from being sold or shared as often.
Donations of $ 25 or less barely cover the charity’s marketing costs, Charity Navigator says, so many organizations sell the names of those donors to other charities to generate additional income. It may sound unfair, but charities are more likely to protect the privacy of more generous donors.
Donate anonymously
Perhaps the easiest way to do a good deed – to donate without being penalized for spam – is to donate anonymously.
Google’s OneToday donation app used to be a good bet for this – it allowed donations to various non-profit projects, just one dollar at a time, and your personal information was never shared directly with charities. Unfortunately, it was closed earlier this year with little or no notice .
OneToday has worked through Network for Good , which also allows you to donate to charities anonymously through its website and will only share your contact information with the charities you support with your permission. You can still donate this way even if you don’t use the Google app. If not, there are many donation apps out there, but it can be difficult to determine what exactly they do with your data, so be careful and read these privacy policies carefully. Many of the ones we checked while researching this article were either targeted at faith-based organizations ( Givelify ) or it is unclear how your data will be shared with the nonprofits you donate to ( CoinUp ).
Perhaps there is no 100% reliable way never received charitable aid, but the above tips should help slow the flood. This article was originally published in May 2014 by Melanie Pinola. In August 2020, it was substantially revised by Joel Cunningham to include more recent information, update dead links, and revise the section on anonymous transmission.