an open letter to Habitat for Humanity

[cellio]

Dear Habitat for Humanity,

I helped you build a house once, and later gave you money. You spent far in excess of that donation sending me solicitations, making me less inclined to send you more. (I know other charities that use their money more wisely.) Then you started sending me spam and ignored cease-and-desist notices. I used your next postage-paid envelope to send a final cease-and-desist on the spam thing, and that didn't work either. You went onto my "do not donate, ever" list.

And today you called and were irritated that I considered this a problem. The proper response to "your policies have led me to re-evaluate and I do not want to hear from you" is not "but we do all this good work!" but, rather, "I'm sorry" followed by either "I'll take you off all our lists" or "how can we make things right?". I have now directed you not to call me and I'm sure it's been 18 months since I sent you any money (which is the timeout on the do-not-call law). If you call me again I will invoke the attorney general. If you want to set matters right, you must send me a physical letter (not email, not a phone call) actually addressing my complaints. Have a nice day.

Comments

[fauxklore]

I've given up donating to several organizations precisely because of the volume of junk mail they've sent. I generally consider one a quarter reasonable. Organizations that send multiple begging letters the same week automatically go onto my "do not donate" list.

In general, I've shifted my charity strategy to give more money to fewer organizations over the years. It seems that the number of solicitations has often been inversely related to the size of the donation, which makes the offenders all the more offensive.

[cellio]

I've been making the same kind of shift too, over 10-15 years. It's amazing that I still hear from the ones who dropped out in the first round!