Contact them and ask to be removed from their mailing list- tell them why.

Drives me wild to see death notices asking for donations to Wounded Warriors in honor of well-meaning people -- another scam.

Good to know chisue! There's a website, I think it's called Charity Watch that shows just where each charity's money goes. I guess we really don't know how accurate it is, but there's lots of reviews too.

Several times a year I get phone calls from the breast cancer foundation asking me to give the same amount or more as I did the year before. I never give money to phone callers and I know I never gave to them, but they keep on calling.

My donations are unsolicited and very rarely to large organizations. IMO, United Way is one of the worst.

I've been seeing commercials for St. Jude's Hospital and I think they are VERY worth the donations.

I agree on St Jude's, and I also think Wounded Warriors is an extremely worthwhile organization. I have never checked to see how they use the money they raise, so I will check that out.

Rusty

Isn't Wounded Warrior the one that was advertising like crazy, and then it came out that most of their spending was on the salaries of the employees and lavish "team building exercises" for the employees which amounted to all-expense paid group vacation/parties.

Where I work they send out red envelopes on behalf of United Way, the letter inside is already filled out with your name and it provides checkboxes so you can easily select the amount to donate. They request that you return the envelope to HR even if you don't want to donate, in a transparent attempt to guilt you into donating. Because of that the past four years envelopes are still sitting in my office mail box.

"Contact them" LOL!!!! We gave once a year to a children's charity deal. We were inundated with their advertising requests!! I sent a note "If I hear from you b4 next Christmas you will not get one more dime from me. We have crossed the off our list of potential recipients.

At least 10 years ago I was asked by a friend to donate in her best friend's memory to St. Judes. I sent $10 and am STILL receiving return address labels!

Several months ago we checked out their "wish list" and took cat food, paper towels and kitty litter to a local spay-neuter (offshoot of a local well known and respected no kill animal shelter). That WEEK we received a plea for a cash donation and MORE address labels!!

We have a local charity that feeds the homeless, and I donate to that. They have very low overhead and a good reputation. It is sad that United Way, Red Cross, and other national organizations spend so much on overhead. Also found out that Goodwill is not a non-profit. That surprised me.

"Isn't Wounded Warrior the one that was advertising like crazy, and then it came out that most of their spending was on the salaries of the employees and lavish "team building exercises" for the employees which amounted to all-expense paid group vacation/parties."

I don't know. What I do know is what they have done for a family friend, a young man who was in the Marine's Special Forces. He lost his eye sight, not sure of exactly what happened to him, but he was deployed in Afghanistan when it happened. (I think it was Afghanistan) And Wounded Warriors has been a tremendous help for him and his family. I've also seen, first hand, quite a number of other examples of just how much this organization does for our heroes.

Rusty

We give only locally, once a year. A token amount goes to a hooved animal rescue organization. Ninety-five percent of our donations go to organizations that take care of the basic needs of *people* -- organizations that are capable of limiting aid to truly needy applicants. We read budget statements to cull organizations spending too much on fund raising and/or director compensation.

(Many people equate "non-profit" with "charitable", but it only means all funds taken in are budgeted to be spent within the organization. There can be enormous salaries within non-profits.)

Rusty -- Just Google "Wounded Warrior". I'm glad they help some, but they could help many, many more if they didn't help themselves first.

I support parrot charities -- so many species are in danger of becoming extinct. They are making major strides for some species. Also donate to local PBS stations.

This just came in my CNN news feeds:

The National Vietnam Veterans Foundations, a zero-rated charity that was the
object of a CNN report in mid-May, has closed its doors for good, according to
one of the charity's executives.

Here's one paragraph of this: In CNN's original report, the watchdog group
Charity Navigator gave the Foundation zero out of four stars. According to its
public tax returns, called 990s, the Foundation took in $29 million over a
four-year period but nearly all of it went to telemarketers and fundraisers. In
one year, the charity also paid a parking garage bill of nearly $8,000.

The only charity I donate to is the Pittsburgh Children's Hospital Free Care. All donations go to the children that need things to help them.

I get so tired of getting tote bags, gloves, umbrellas, tee shirts, etc. from charities that I have never given a dime to. How much could they do with the money spent on all of that stuff?

Interesting article on Goodwill in the Huffington Post....

Exploiting workers

Gary Sinse,(actor) has his own Vietnam Veterans charity, and I would donate to it. He travels around the country with his band, Lt.Dan Band and the charity receives the proceeds from his concerts. The Wounded Warrior did spend over 4 million for a 3 day marketing/teems get together in Florida, Lavish food, champagne and local workers were almost ordered to stay at lavish hotel is was held at. Their Ceo has been removed, he'd been in marketing before his rise to ceo. Too bad, they did help some, but more spent on marketing. Bad reviews from former employees, too.

One of the most maddening things is once you give to a charity, they keep hounding you for more. If they'd save all the money they spend on mailings, they'd have a small fortune!

I have read so many bad things about the Red Cross and some of those stories are very disheartening. But I have got to say that after Hurricane Isabel in 2004 I don't know what we would have done without them. We were seven days without electricity and 9 days without water. It was wonderful to get three hot meals a day. It's true that the first day or two we only got MREs but they soon had a trailer in here with people cooking and providing water and other necessities. I was very thankful.

Three years ago, I sent some money to a cause I liked and within a month, gimmie appeals started pouring in. I presume those rascals sold my name to a service who supplies lists to fund raisers. That angered me. Since then, I have shut off all appeals except a couple of local ones and only ones that are cost efficient.

I continue to get a load of appeals due to that initial event.

Years ago, my father-in-law was flooded with appeals due to his profession. Back then a large number of fund raisers included postage paid envelopes. (Apparently, the issuing party only pays postage on the returns.) He would mail back an empty pre-stamped envelope, and if the appeal was onerous, he'd stuff the envelope with junk paper to make it overweight. He had tried to get removed from the listings to no avail. Returning envelopes with the form and no payment, or the form with no payment plus stuffing, seemed to help reduce mailings.

I think the selling of lists and repeated appeals are wearing most of us out. We too donate mostly to local places. It makes me sad to see my small donation in the memory of someone who has passed used up mailing after mailing, which I ignore.

I give to a number of charities, many of them locally-related, but some national or international in scope, mostly related to helping people, especially those in need. One of the major international ones is the Canadian Foodgrains Bank and each dollar that I give is matched by I think it's $3.00 currently from the government's foreign aid program. A local church and farmer has a sign by the road that shows that the value of produce from some acreage there is to go to them.

Most are social service, medical (e.g. hospital foundation, MSF/DWB), educational (library, univ., my seminary), multi-nation human rights (Amnesty International) etc., and some have my gift multplied by government support related to a multiplier of amounts of individual donations, e.g. CUSO (Canadian Universituy Service Overseas, that operates somewhat like the Peace Corps).

In one situation a while ago I think that the ratio was $9.00 for every dollar that I gave.

I've been thinking that I should do some checking as to how efficiently a number of them operate,and knew the names of some agencie to consult ... but my very active "forgetter" mechanism has been operatinal there, I fear.

Do some of you Canadians know of some agencies that do that in our area?

Some have told me that giving a major percentage of my income to charities seems unusual, but I say that I was giving quite a lot before, and the actual cost to me from recent percentage increase is the difference between my tax position before and what it is now. I redirected that portion of the money that formerly went to taxes to being used by those couple of dozen charitable causes.

ole joyfuelled

You're a very generous guy, OJ. But I'm sure many of us suspected that. :)