My wife and I have supported literally hundreds of charitable organizations over the years. I donate on-line whenever possible, which means that many of these organizations have my email address. The vast majority of them are smart and reputable enough not to send me bulk email I didn’t agree to receive, or at worst to unsubscribe me from their bulk mailings when I ask them to do so.
Alas, there are a few organizations whose bulk email practices are so disreputable, so shameful, so entirely unacceptable, that when all else fails, my only remaining recourse is to attempt to shame them into cleaning up their act, and to urge others not to support them financially until they’ve done so.
In a letter to the editor in the September 21 edition of the Boston Herald, one Christine Giroux wrote:
At the core of the health care controversy is the question of whether health care is a basic right held by every American citizen… We all need food, clothing and shelter. Are these basic rights too? … The truth is that these things are not rights and neither is health care.
I found her letter so astoundingly offensive that I had to write a response. Unfortunately, the Herald printed neither my response nor any other objecting to Giroux’s assertion that food, clothing and shelter are not basic rights. Perhaps this is because they felt the issue had already played itself out, or perhaps it’s because they agree with Giroux, or perhaps it’s because they didn’t think my letter was controversial enough, or perhaps they think they’ve printed too many letters from me recently . In any case, here’s what I wrote:
To the editor:
Attempting to contrast with the right to health care, Christine Giroux asks, “We all need food, clothing and shelter. Are these basic rights too?”
According to the millennia-old traditions and ethical code observed by me and my fellow Jews, the answer is clear and unequivocal: yes, of course they are!
Supporting the poor is not merely something to do if one feels like it. It is an obligation placed both on individuals and on the community (i.e., the government). Not only is it a good deed to support the poor; it is a grave sin against man and God to do otherwise.
While I would not presume to speak for other religions, I find it difficult to understand how many who deny these basic rights profess to follow a religion whose holy texts teach, “Let the man with two tunics share with him who has none, and let him who has food do likewise,” and, “If you wish to be complete, go and sell your possessions and give to the poor.”
American culture encourages the mistaken beliefs that poverty can be eliminated and that the poor are responsible for their own condition. While that may be true for some, the truth is that there will always be people who need the help of others, and help them we must.
I recently received a letter from a local non-profit institution about their “2009 Annual Gala”. It reads, in part:
This year, we will present the Adbook [sic] in an exciting new virtual (electronic) format. Rather than a printed book, the Adbook contents will be presented during the Gala both as a mural display and as a projected video slideshow, which will later appear on the school’s website. Advertisers will also receive a high-quality printed sheet of their own ads. This Virtual Adbook is a move toward better environmental stewardship, helping us conserve more of Earth’s precious resources…
This raises a whole host of questions in my mind. For example: (more…)
Operation Smile started spamming me in 2004 after I donated to them on-line and gave them my email address so they could send me a receipt.
They have sent me spam on November 5, 2004; December 22, 2004; January 11, 2005; December 7, 2005; December 20, 2005; March 8, 2006; May 11, 2006; May 28, 2007; and November 4, 2008.
I have complained to them about the spam on November 7, 2004; January 9, 2005; December 8, 2005; May 28, 2007, and November 4, 2008. The one and only response I received was on January 11, 2005, when they apologized and claimed (falsely) that the spam would stop.
The American Institute Philanthropy gives Operation Smile a grade of rating of “D” (on an ABCDF scale). In contrast, Smile Train, another charity which does similar work, gets a “B-” grade.
Because of their poor grade and their penchant for spamming, I strongly discourage people from providing any support, financial or otherwise, to Operation Smile.
As I’ve written previously, I’ve been trying for almost a year to eliminate junk mail from my mailbox.
The main strategy I use for this is, quite simply, to ask the organizations that send me junk mail to stop, and to escalate my request when it goes unheeded. In extreme cases, where the escalation is also ignored, I complain to the Better Business Bureau.
This pretty much always works. I have never encountered an organization which has ignored all of my requests and even the BBB complaint. Until now, that is.
The first an only (thus far) organization to completely ignore all of my requests and even my BBB complaint is a Jewish charity, American Friends of Tzohar. (more…)
Do you get a lot of junk mail? I mean the kind that arrives on paper through the able ministrations of the U.S. Postal Service, not the kind that arrives via email. You know, mail-order catalogs, promotions from the phone company, requests for money from charities, that sort of thing.
Do you throw most of it away?
Do you know how bad for the environment it is? Cutting down trees, manufacturing paper, manufacturing ink, printing junk, transporting it to its recipients, and disposing of or recycling it all add up to a huge waste.
Do you know what a time-waster it is? Looking at each piece to decide whether it’s junk, opening the ones that fool you, and discarding it all may take only a few seconds per piece, but when you add up all those seconds, it comes out to quite a lot of wasted time!
I was once in the same boat. Six days a week, my mailbox was flooded with junk, which far exceeded the useful stuff, and a day without any mail at all was simply unheard of.
But now, I go for weeks without seeing any junk, and our mail carrier is spared the walk up our porch stairs at least once a week. Putting a stop to the junk isn’t rocket science. It takes some effort, but it’s worth it. And I’m going to tell you exactly how to do it.
I am writing to bring to your attention a fraudulent charity that is operating out of Florida and scamming well-meaning individuals.
I received a solicitation yesterday for an organization calling itself “Macular Degeneration Association” and which identifies itself as “a mission of,” i.e., a front for, the “American Medical Research Organization”. The address given for the organization is 420 Beach Road, P.O. Box 20256, Sarasota, FL 34276, and the telephone number given is 941-870-4399. The charity claims to be registered in Florida with the registration number CH18753.
Here is how I know that this organization is a scam: (more…)
The Perkins School for the Blind used to be on the list of charitable organizations which my wife and I support. At some point I donated to them on-line through their Web site, providing my email address at that time so that they could send a receipt via email.
They subsequently used that address to spam me on May 30, 2007. I sent them a complaint in response about the spam on May 31, telling them that I gave them my email address so they could send me a receipt, not so that they could add me to bulk email lists, and that if they ever spammed me again I’d report them to the appropriate service providers and permanently remove them from the list of organizations which we support.
They did not respond to my complaint, and they spammed me again on June 14, so I sent them another complaint, informing them that I had, as promised, complained to their service providers and permanently removed them from our charitable giving list.
That message finally got a response on the same day which read in part as follows:
Please accept our sincerest apologies. While we are new to email messaging, we take spamming very seriously and in no way is it our intention to send unwanted emails to any of our constituents. Unfortunately, there was a communication breakdown and your request to be removed from our email list did not make it to the appropriate people. I assure you that you have been removed from our email list permanently. We are also working on a policy for the school to ensure that this does not happen again.
That’s fine as far as it goes, but unfortunately, they spammed me again today, January 31, 2008. Not only that, but they included the recipient list of the spam in the “To:” header of the email, thereby violating the privacy of the 986 Perkins supporters on the recipient list of that spam, and perhaps of even more people than that if they sent out multiple such messages.
Needless to say, I sent them a rather strongly worded complaint, indicating that I had reported the spam to their service providers and ending with this:
Please give me one good reason why I shouldn’t send email to the 985 other people whose addresses you exposed suggesting to them that they complain to you and to your service providers if they are as upset as I am about your spamming and your violation of their privacy (well, actually, there are only 979 other people for me to write to, since I’ve CC’d this message to your coworkers at Perkins who appeared on the distribution list).
Shame on you.
I got back an apology a few hours later from the individual at Perkins who had sent out the email, which read in part, “I realized that I made a huge error when I put everyone’s name in the `to’ field… there is noone to blame but myself and it shouldn’t reflect on the school.” Later in the day, another individual at Perkins actually called my house to apologize, but I wasn’t home to take the call and I frankly have no interest in speaking with them about this and have no intention of calling them back.
I don’t think they’re bad people. I don’t think they’re intentionally trying to send spam to people who don’t want to receive it. However, none of that changes the fact that people who can’t handle the mechanics of only sending bulk email to people who have asked to receive it, shouldn’t be sending bulk email, period.
On November 26, I contacted The March of Dimes through a form on their Web site, asking them to remove me from their postal mailing list. (This was not because of a specific grievance against The March of Dimes; I’m trying to get us removed from all mailing lists to reduce wasted time dealing with junk mail and damage to the environment from mailings that go straight to recycling.)
Their Web form asked for an email address, which I gave them, so that they could respond to my request. As is my practice, I gave them an organization-specific email address, so that I could track what they did with it. I also checked the option on the Web form telling them that I didn’t want to receive any bulk email from them.
They never responded to my postal unsubscribe request.
They did, however, disregard my specific instructions about bulk email — I received spam from them yesterday.
It has been my experience that there are many worthy charitable organizations which don’t send spam. I therefore refuse to support organizations which do, and I discourage others from supporting them as well.
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. In any case, here’s what I wrote: