On 9/20/2015 7:05 AM, (PeteCresswell) wrote:
Does anybody have firsthand inside experience in the charity industry?

Specifically, I am wondering if there are one or more central databases
where donors and prospective donors are tracked.

From the outside it looks to me like the name/address of somebody in our
family is in one of these databases and every time they respond to a
solicitation, the point value assigned to them is incremented.

Then it looks like various charities that subscribe to that database
service put together mailings based on that point value.

The good-hearted person in question doesn't have a suspicious bone in
their body and routinely sends $20-$25 to charities I've never heard of
and the contents of our mailbox keeps growing and growing with
solicitations form more and more "Charities".

Quotes because every so often I get all spun up and I spot check some of
them against www.ChariteyNavigator.com. Hint: if it's anything to do
with active military, veterans, or cops that's not a good sign. -)

Yesterday, the mailman was barely able to fit it all into the box - and
this is a pretty good-sized box.

Also the apparent commitment of charities to individual mailings seems
to have gone up. Now we are getting dollar bills, checks for $2.00,
and coins in some mailings - predicated, I guess, on pushing some
people's "Obligation" buttons. Maybe this hypothetical database
service is sophisticated enough keep score by the types of solicitations
and which buttons they push?

So: does my hypothesis about the central database hold water?

While I can't attest to ever seeing such a mechanism, your observations
hold true here, as well.

It only stands to reason: someone who *has* made a donation is
probably more likely to make ANOTHER donation than someone who
you'd have to contact "cold".

We've been moving towards sending cashier's checks (keep receipt for
tax purposes) in lieu of personal checks. This lets us give as we
please, maintain the tax deduction, keep off the ever growing lists
of beggars, *and*, oddly enough, saves those organizations from
their eager attempts to solicit a *second* donation! (some seem to
spend your entire *first* donation on POSTAGE/mailings to solicit
further donations!)

By far, we prefer to give our time to charities that we consider
worthy. You also learn a lot about the inner workings of these
groups by doing so; things that you'd never know (nor approve of!)
if you just "wrote a check".

[Many charities are just thinly disguised efforts to "employ some
select few on the good will of many"]