Piles and piles

[mdlbear]

Today I began the annual ritual called "Sorting the Charities". It's a real pain for me to keep track of charity contributions -- many of them send a request every month! That's a lot of checkbook to check back through, and they're obviously hoping I'll miss one. (We'll ignore the fact that maybe if I paid in January, they wouldn't keep bugging me all year.)

Anyway, my technique for coping with this deluge of begging letters is simply to toss them onto a big pile and sort through them in late December, in time to write a big batch of checks during the holiday season, when I'm feeling generous.

Eventually, of course, I have to decant the pile into a box before it reaches critical mass and explodes onto the office floor. Last year it took two boxes. This year it took three.

Rather than take over a large chunk of the living room for a folding table, as I did last year, I went out to the garage and found a 2'x4' chunk of half-inch oak plywood, and set it onto a corner of the office counter weighted down with the UPS that I took out of service last night and turned off while it's waiting for a new battery. It's the corner normally occupied by the guest computer, but nobody is likely to be using it until Saturday at the earliest.

I have gotten through the oldest box, and the plywood is currently covered with some 30-odd piles of envelopes. There are a few charities that don't bother putting a logo or a return address on their envelopes -- those go straight into the recycling bag, as do the ones I know I'm not going to support this year, but that somehow slipped past me on the initial mail sort. Folks, if you want my money, you'll make it easy for me to tell who you are.

I think what I'm going to do next is go through the last box and the small pile that's accumulated in the last few weeks. Then I can give the middle box a cursory run-through in case I missed anything.

Maybe next year I'll make a file folder for every charity, keep careful track, and pay a few every month. It would make a lot of sense. Bets, anyone?

10:52pm Update: done sorting. Now I just have to find the most appropriate (not always the most recent) item to pay in each stack, possibly decide what else to drop, and write checks. Tomorrow. I also have to go through my other piles of procrastinated mail and see what needs urgent attention; fortunately these are much smaller.

Comments

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

No bet. Not this year, anyway. :)

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

I tend to put my charity money into a very few recipients who each get more from me than any one recipient would if I spread it out more. This makes it easy to keep track -- any begging letter that doesn't either come from one of my three or four regulars, or catch my attention on first reading enough to possibly beat out one of my three or four regulars for the slot gets thrown away.

[hms42]

You'll get your 2nd CD out before you bother to do this. :)

As for charity choices, I only actively donate to a few and those get time vs cash.

I support Interfilk, my college ($25/year and now only in memory of a professor I liked), my old scout troop, and a number of regional conventions I donate TIME vs cash to.

Everything else is unlikely to get anything from me including a recommendation, but I do occasionally suggest to people to donate to their local food bank as a trade.

Harold

[tibicina.livejournal.com]

My parents do roughly the same thing, but twice a year (sometime in mid-to-late december, and sometime in june/july. Sorting the piles is always interesting.

Also, no, paying them earlier in the year really doesn't generally make them stop sending you things. Quite the reverse, really.

[mdlbear]

Actually, the checks will generally arrive in January, so I suppose it wouldn't help after all. Oh, well.

Charities

[harmonyheifer.livejournal.com]

As a single mother struggling to put food on my own table, I always managed to donate to our local food bank because they help a wide variety of those in immediate need and have an excellent track record of rolling even small sums into a lot of assistance with very low administration costs. I still do this, although the check is a bit larger these days. I have also supported public TV and public radio even when money was tight. These days I have the money taken out of my checking account monthly.

Everyone else gets the standard "We have already given to our chosen charities this year," response. I am constantly amazed at how many teenagers show up on my doorstep in what appear to be fairly expensive clothes trying to raise money for some type of additional educational experience sponsored by their school. I'm not sure why this annoys me, but it does. I certainly never let my daughter go begging door to door like that, and most of these kids are high school or college age. Why don't they get a real job if they want the extras and their parents can't afford to pay for it?

Re: Charities

[mdlbear]

It certainly annoys me. Supposedly that's what property taxes are for; unfortunately our idiot politicians are always more willing to cut school budgets than to raise taxes.

My standard response to door-to-door and telephone solicitations is the same: we don't transact business that way. Send me something on paper.

[mbumby.livejournal.com]

I got curious back in the '90s and started a spreadsheet on how many begs I got. I thought it was getting larger & larger. (My row of begs turned down from 1995 - 2004 ran from: 49, 69, 33, 146, 252, 331, 324, 249, 212, 183, while the count of distinct charities from this year (and all years prior) went from 20 (20), 27 (33), 19 (39) 67 (82) 86 (118), 118 (166), 114 (196), 92 (218), 70 (239), and 50 (249).) If I actually donated to a charity, I would highlight the charity name, and highlight the count of begs from that charity for that year. (I know I'll not see something in the checkbook, so as I'm writing the check I go to the spreadsheet.) Also, if a charity I am inclined toward pissed me off, I'd make a note there (i.e. Used guilt in 2000. Ignore for 3 years ... 2003) -- so I would check the spreadsheet before writing a check. Now I just write down the payment and how it was done (Paypal, my account, the joint account) when I write it -- and then when I get a small stack of begs, I'll decide which I might give to, see if I've already given, and then decide to recycle it or whether it's important to give more. I'll even write it down if it's not tax deductible, with notes as to how much is or isn't.