I am a personal assistant for a woman in my city. Each day she
receives piles of mail requesting charitable donations; these completely confuse
her. She has vascular dementia, and finds the tasks of sorting and making wise
decisions impossible. Donations go to whomever cries the loudest or sends the
most mail. Often I feel her contributions go to questionable causes disguised as
reputable ones. How can I find a list of truly worthwhile places to donate to
and pass that on to her? My advice for your employer would be to completely stop giving to
charities that mail her these solicitations. Help her get proactive with her
giving. She can research charities by cause, mission and rating at
www.charitynavigator.org. Help her find charities that she can trust, contact
those charities directly and eliminate this costly and invasive mail
solicitation that ensures the loudest, and not the most effective, wins. If she insists on giving to a few organizations that send her
mail, she should do the following:
Only donate to charities with a demonstrated commitment to
donor privacy. Ask the charities if they have a written
policy that states they will not sell or trade the personal information of their
donors.
Refrain from giving small donations to many
charities. Small donations barely cover the costs incurred
in soliciting the gift. To recoup those costs, many charities will simply sell
the donor’s name to another charity doing similar work. Charities are much more
protective of donors who give large gifts.
Give anonymously. Take advantage of Network
for Good’s online giving system (www.networkforgood.org). It allows you to make
anonymous donations to any of the more than 1 million charities in existence in
America. Trent Stamp, Charity Navigator, Mahwah, N.J.
Organizations that cry the loudest or send the most mail just
might be the most deserving. Monitor the text of each successive letter. If your
employer sends a charitable contribution, note if the organization reports on
the impact the gift had on its work. If the organization fails to acknowledge
the gift yet continues to send the same message, either it is not paying
attention or it has a bogus message. If it does not report the difference gifts
make, perhaps it isn’t reputable and is playing on emotions. The best way to give is to seek out organizations that serve
causes your employer cares about. Check their annual reports, their websites and
other information about their effectiveness. Take the initiative to make gifts
only to those organizations. Reserve the right to ignore all other appeals,
especially uninvited ones.
Timothy L. Seiler, The Fund Raising School, Center on Philanthropy, Indiana
University
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