Charity Scams

    My wife and I regularly donate to a number of charities: local organizations such as Peterborough Fire and Rescue, Monadnock Music, and Monadnock Worksource; environmental do-gooders such as Audubon, Nature Conservancy, and World Wildlife Fund.; traditional groups such as ASPCA, Salvation Army, and Goodwill Industries; and New Hampshire veteran and firefighter benevolent societies.
    Each April, come IRS time, I agonizingly search our records, add up our previous year’s contributions, multiply by 10, and enter the result on my income tax return.
    A few years back I began to notice that we were contributing two times a year ─ sometimes three ─ to many of our favorite charities.
    Now I did not squander 21 years of my middle age at Reader’s Digest General Books Division without developing sensitive nostrils for the presence of Rattus Marketus - a variety of corporate pestilence known to the public as "Marketers" that are hatched like insect larvae out of third-rate community college incubators and then parceled out to semi-respectable enterprises where they while away their time puffing out their tiny chests and dipping their sticky fingers into whatever tills are available.
    The symptoms of marketing infestation have now appeared with a vengeance within the Charity Industry. Some years ago, apparently, after the requisite number of catered meetings, get-togethers in exotic Caribbean locales, expense-account luncheons, and ass-kissing forays into the window-offices of senior management, it dawned on a select group of marketing geniuses that after a few months almost all the suckers forget whether or not they have contributed and hence are ripe for a repeat blood-letting and a repeat repeat blood-letting and, perhaps, a repeat repeat repeat blood-letting.
    Before I continue, let me explain something about the marketing class. These people belong to a sub-species of humanity that inhabits a nether world of perpetual darkness occasioned by the fact that they are born with their heads stuck up their own assholes. One result of this odd and acrobatic physical infirmity is an inability to perceive anything beyond their own sphincters ─ for example, that a decision by top GM executives to produce gigantic, glitzy, over-priced crapmobiles with huge tail fins might lead to a jump in profits for a year or two, but will inevitably be followed by catastrophic bankruptcy a decade or two later...or that milking the same cash cow mailing list of Reader’s Digest subscribers over and over might increase dollar flow for a few months, but will soon be followed by one large, dead, dried-out bovine...or that trying to jack up contributions to the Sierra Club by demonizing George Bush will leave you shit up the creek when Bush leaves office...or that there are higher considerations in life for Reader’s Digest marketers such as George Grune, Dick McLoughlin, Tom Esencourt, Ken Gordon, Marcia Lefkowitz, Neil McRae, Jack Smith, Jim Schadt, and John Bohane than living in Chappaqua or driving a Mercedes, or owning a herd of shih tzu dogs, or retiring in luxury to Spain or Florida, or fretting about which masterpieces of modern art from the Wallace collection should adorn their office walls. 
    With this said, here is an open letter to the National Audubon Society, Peterborough Fire and Rescue, the World Wildlife Fund, Monadnock Music, the Nature Conservancy, the Salvation Army, Pro Firefighters of New Hampshire, Wounded Vietnam Veterans, and any other group I may have missed that comes nosing around for money again and again and again:

Dear Sirs:

We will no longer contribute to your charity, no matter how worthy it is, unless you clearly and unambiguously state exactly when our last contribution was made, how much that contribution was, and why you are hitting on us again so soon after our last donation.

I also disrespectfully suggest that you get rid of your entire staff of marketing "experts." The resultant improvement in air quality, as well as major savings in perks and salaries and bonuses for these useless and greedy morons, will more than compensate for any short-term loss of donor contributions that they may generate briefly with their transparent lies and tricks and subterfuge.

Very sincerely,

The Macks

Norm Mack, Peterborough, dog@myfairpoint.net

 

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