Absurd Singularity

Late last year, Erin decreed that we would donate a small amount (split equally amongst the 3 of us in the family) to charity every month. Something to do with karma. =p So I dutifully looked up some worthy causes online and submitted our donations.

Unfortunately, that seems to have exposed us to a flood of charity spam mail as we've been receiving a steady stream of donation requests since the beginning of the year. And they almost always come with a sheet of address label stickers pre-printed with your address on them. Which I guess would be nice if I actually mailed stuff out to people a lot these days but I don't. So we wind up with a nice stack of address labels that we'll probably never use.

Another common tactic is to include a nickel in the donation request mail and requesting that you send back the nickel along with a donation. One questionable organization even sent a dollar. Kind of like a shame tactic I guess. And I do feel bad about keeping the nickel but we simply can't donate to every single organization that asks. Or if we did, we'd be donating like $5 which is just dumb. But I do try to eventually donate something to the organizations that I deem worthy. Usually when I get one of these mailings I'll first check to see if it's for a cause that's already covered by some organization that we've already donated to. Unless they're for a well-known hospital or local (state-wide) charity, I toss those that don't pass this initial check. Next I hit Google to check if the organization has been accused of any shady behavior. Those that fail that check get tossed as well. The rest gets added to the pile on my desk.

When the first of the month rolls around, I pick 2 out of the pile to assign Erin and Devon's allotted amount to. My personal allotment is tied to the WWF as I had set up a recurring monthly donation with them. Since Devon can't actually donate personally (being 15 months old and all), the organization I wind up donating his portion to is one where I can specify that the donation is "in honor of" another person, Devon in this case. Usually they'll send a thank you letter addressed to Devon and Erin will file it away.

I would much prefer it though if these organizations stopped sending us mail. I guess my name and address has been put on a mailing list out there somewhere but I'm not sure how I would go about getting it off. Right now it's not too annoying yet but if it escalates I may have to go and figure it out.