Thirtysomething

Charities Are Beginning To Get on My Nerves

Well, that should get me some brownie points with karma, right?

About six months ago, I donated to a cystic fibrosis charity. As you may remember, Rolo was at risk for possibly having an atypical type of CF, but it seems he's fine and I was feeling like I should do something to pay it forward. So I donate. And since then I get another request via snail mail every week to donate more. Requests that come with packs return address stickers, personalized just for me. As if to say, "we made you these labels, now don't you want to make another donation". So I now have no fewer than 500 return address labels. Whatever.

But now, other charities have gotten wind of my charitable nature and I'm now getting literally 3 donation requests a week from all sorts of organizations. Breast cancer research. Diabetes. Alzheimer's. Lung cancer. And they all come with personalized return address labels. Or some other gift. Like a nickel. There's actually some charity that mails you a freakin' nickel in order to entice you to donate. Wha? YOU ARE A CHARITY. SAVE YOUR NICKELS!

Today from the cystic fibrosis people, I got a personalized notepad in a fall theme, along with, you guessed it, some fall-themed return address labels.

My question is, what to do with all this stuff? I mean I feel bad just tossing all these labels. It seems wasteful. But is it also wrong to use free stuff from a charity to which I'm never going to donate? And couldn't they just take all the money they'd save in printing all these labels and use that for their charity?

I'm going to use the notepad I received today. But that's only because I will eventually donate to CF again.

Labels: annoying me, CF

posted by DJ Heavy D @ 8:12 AM