Thursday, January 29, 2009

Lemme 'lone . . .


We are much more savvy about replying to solicitations through the mail since we found the Charity Navigator website which rates charities and just as importantly, reveals which organizations are not charities.

The rating system lets you see how efficiently a charity uses the money it raises. All of this info is in the public domain and anyone could discover it if so inclined. I do like having it done for me. I'm lazy that way. Oh, and you don't have to sign up or join anything to use the services of the Charity Navigator.

An additional benefit is that our junk mail is decreasing because, most of the time, the navigator provides an address to which you can write to opt out of the mailing lists. Or, if you have an 800 number on the solicitation and you do not intend to reply to their request, you can call the number and opt out of future mailings. It takes a few weeks they'll say, but that's better than never.

The snowstorm of junk mail is the spam of our actual world. The drifts are melting, just a bit, and saving trees to boot. . .

2 comments:

Big Ed said...

We could just give to the church where we know where our money is going instead of spreading the wealth. Ba Humbug!

Anonymous said...

We could also give AlGore's address as the place for these folk to send their information. That way, he'd be so busy responding and trying to cancel the notices and opt out - that his carbon footprint would shrink to baby step size and he could stop paying those enormous amounts for Carbon Credits. Anything to stop global warming. Gotta go check for ice on the car now. 20's tonight.