This a fairly common practice, Fiona, and for everybody it puts off there are others who do respond - the tactics you describe do bring in more money than they cost. This is why big charities like the Red Cross persist with this sort of marketing. They are able to bulk buy the freebies in such large quantities that the costs are very low and as charities they are able to reclaim the VAT component of such purchases. Many only pay their 'chuggers' on results which is why they are so persistent in trying to get you to sign up. So again, the charities who do this are still pulling in more money that it costs them.

Simply ignore these mail shots for long enough and you'll drop out of their fairly sophisticated databases but the moment you do give them another donation you'll get re-entered and the cycle starts again. The thing which seems to have triggered a deluge for me is making an on-line donation to DEC appeal which meant that a whole cluster of charities then had my details on record and proceeded to send me further appeals. If you do donate on-line and don't want to get further e/mail shots make sure that you tick the box saying that you don't want to receive any further info - by law they must ask and abide by your answer to this question. Or else do what I now do, which is to pay any donations in over the counter at my bank or via my own on-line or telephone banking. There's no charge for this and the charity then gets no personal info on you.

The one that really gets my goat is the annual mailing I get each October/November of Christmas cards from the Mouth and Foot Painting Artists. I've no idea how they got my details because I've never bought any of their cards. They don't tell you that they are a charity but they don't go out of their way to tell you that they are a commercial business either. The company is owned by a small group of mouth and foot artists and 'membership' of the 'Association' is not open to all such artists - this is done in order to maximise the income for those who are. Nothing I've done in the past has managed to stop them continuing to send them - even mailing the cards back in the SAE envelope they hoped I'd use to send them a cheque didn't do the job. They just stopped enclosing the SAE because it meant that they had to pay the postage on it if you sent it back!

SM

I make a regular donation to Cancer Research by standing order. However not being happy with that, they continually sent forms asking me to consider increasing my donation, the ungrateful ******.

I finally got so fed up with it that I wrote on the form that if I ever received another one I would stop the donation I currently make if they were so ungrateful. I haven't had one since.

There is a member here whose husband is employed in medical research by at charity and he regularly goes to conferences in places like South America. At first this seemed like a huge waste of finances by the charity, but apparently the costs do not come out of the donations as they are funded by other means.

The Red Cross seem to be particularly "bad" at the moment; as Fiona,I've had 2 or 3 mailshots in the last couple of months with pens,cards,placemats etc- and our street has been targetted twice recently by their door knockers - yesterday I actually got really p***ed off with the guy as he rang the door bell twice within 30 seconds - I told him to go away in no uncertain fashion!!

Luci
It just doesn't sound good does it? Sma- perhaps it does bring in more than it loses but as more and more gets shared on social media I think its only a matter of time before people become fed up of it all. Dave- so its not just me!

I doubt I'm going to be popular by saying this , but I don't give to any of the big charities , I'm more than happy t dig deep for local charities and people who I know doing sponsored events to raise money for local charities .
I'm happy to give quite a bit , like to the daughter of someone I work with who did a parachute jump to raise money for Heart of Kent Hospice , to people who raise money for Demelza house and I often will buy and donate raffle prizes to groups my mum is involved with like active retirement association and local community groups run by the church she goes to , for some of the elderly people who go to the volunteer run groups it's probably the only social contact they get , I suppose you can say that they are in still in a better position than starving children in Africa for instance , but I feel that it's a responsibility to help the people around you .
My brother used to work for a large institute that had children who were partially sighted or blind and also they cared for children who have a short life expectancy due to illness and they had a fundraising team who were employed on wages that were 3 or 4 times the wages of the life tutors / carers , they did raise shedloads of money but boy did they waste it as well , in fact it was scandalous the way the money was spent , and I'm sure people wouldn't have been so generous in their giving if they knew how little filtered down to the care and well being of the children .

Talking of the point that Fiona made about being 20% down , a really nice chap who does the collecting for the Royal British Legion in our area came along today and had the takings figure from the collecting pot we have in our shop and that was 20% down on last year , we were having a chat about things and he said that they collect all year , so I asked him to put in a collecting tin permanently , I didn't know they did all year round and I was determined to make sure he got his area collecting figures back up , perhaps people are even keeping their loose change these days ?

andy66 wrote:

Talking of the point that Fiona made about being 20% down , a really nice chap who does the collecting for the Royal British Legion in our area came along today and had the takings figure from the collecting pot we have in our shop and that was 20% down on last year , we were having a chat about things and he said that they collect all year , so I asked him to put in a collecting tin permanently , I didn't know they did all year round and I was determined to make sure he got his area collecting figures back up , perhaps people are even keeping their loose change these days ?

.....interesting point about "loose change" - there always seem to be collection points at the entrance to big supermarkets...but I suspect I'm not alone in never carrying change when I visit Tesco/Morrisons etc as I use my credit card 100% of the time -the only time I would have loose change is when I use a "small" shop or the pub!!!.
Also the trend to price everything as £ xx.99 means that anyone paying in cash frequently ends up with pound coins and the odd p. I tend to keep the £ coins in the car for car parks and quite often don't even pick up the odd 1p coins.
I agree with Andy's comments aboiut local charities -we tend to support people we know doing sponsored events for charities because it seems more personal than donating to an International organisation where we have no real idea what the money is going to be used for.

When I had a shop we had a charity pot on the counter , we quite often did a small job for customers and when some of them asked what the charge was we always said put something in the charity pot. It was nice when a small amount would have been OK but they put 1/2 pound in so our pot had a good bit of money in it .One day a collector come in the door and emptied it and then said I like coming here as I get a good amount of commission. They never had any more, it started going to a small local charity with nice people collecting it for the right reasons.

I'm sure I read in the Guardian that the late Jimmy Savilles charity cost £25,000 in 'expenses' to give out £35,000 in 2010. Says it all to me what a waste of the 25k that people donated thinking it would actually do some good to someone.

I have little time for large charities and would never give to the ones that send endless amount of junk like free pens through the front door, they may be cheaply produced but they are still a waste in an environmental sense as they have taken resources to produce and will end up in landfill.

If a homeless person in the street asked me for the price of a cup of tea and there was a cafe nearby i would rather go and buy the tea & a bun and give it to him or her than give to an organisation deluging me with plastic cr@p, and don't get me started on the TV adverts that are put on and designed to upset and guilt trip you when you are eating your tea.

I sponsored the lads at work for the moustache month in aide of mcmillan [i dont normally donate to them] as its a bit of fun and i told them all they had no hopes of catching me up... but i do support the Earl Hague fund [now called the poppy appeal] but i avoid all the rest

The Red Cross have surpassed themselves this time. The latest envelope through my door today had 2 greetings cards, a bookmark, a pen and 2 coasters! The coasters actually look quite nice. I suppose they are hoping to guilt trip you into the £5 a month they want.

I tend only to give to animal/bird charities (my choice, there are plenty of others who donate to charities for helping the humans of the planet) but never to the RSPCA.

There are several charities local to me to whom I donate, two of which I pay a regular sum to by direct debit each month because I've visited both their centres and was delighted with the work they do. Those two charities are the Raystede Centre For Animal Welfare and the Brent Lodge Wildlife Trust.I was/am able to see how donations are utilised and know that neither charity spends unduly high sums of money on 'unnecessary' expenses.

The only charity i give to is the madasharley holiday fund and the local pub beer fund.
charity to me begins at home and no matter how sad the adverts on tv for starving children in some back water country will make me change my mind. to be honest the only major charity i have given to is st davids cancer fund as they do a great job looking after people with cancer.

I support the Great North Air Ambulance, but in the sense that I've signed up for their lottery draw & when the countless charity bags come round there's only them or Zoe's Place that I'll donate to.

Hubby has a standing order for the RSPCA.