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?
--
Pete Cresswell