What would charitable organizations and other non-profits do without the holiday season? Many groups bring in more donations during December than during any other month of the year. Without holiday giving, meeting basic expenses would be a challenge. If you get a mailing from a group you support, I encourage you to give what you can afford.

Responding to telephone solicitations isn't such a good idea, as Lee Rood reported in the Sunday Des Moines Register:

The vast majority of donations raised by phone or mail by professional fundraisers in Iowa winds up in the hands of professional fundraising companies, a Des Moines Register investigation found.

The Register's examination of more than 80 professional fundraisers serving more than 500 charities - often for little-known nonprofits but sometimes for well-known charities - also shows:

- The median percentage of proceeds that wind up with a charity is about 24 percent, according to reports to Iowa's attorney general by fundraisers that made disclosures in 2007. Just five charities received more than 75 percent of the proceeds from fundraising campaigns.
[...]
- About a half-dozen fundraising companies continue to do business in Iowa even though they have been subject to cease-and-desist orders, hefty fines and multiple court actions for breaking solicitation rules or financial disclosure laws, or for deceiving would-be donors. (See related article on this page.)

- Many of the charities that benefit from the fundraising are poorly rated by watchdog groups or give a tiny fraction to the individuals or groups that solicitors claim donations will benefit.

[...] documents filed with the state show Aria Communications, a St. Cloud, Minn., company that boasts it has an overall return of 77 percent to charities, actually charged two nonprofits more money last year than it managed to raise.

Aria raised $27,678 for the Sierra Club, but charged the California-based nonprofit $30,159 in fees and expenses, according to information the company filed at the Iowa attorney general's office.

The whole article and related sidebar are worth reading. If you want to support a group such as the Sierra Club, find the organization's address on the web or in the phone book and mail a check. That way your full donation will go to a good cause, instead of paying mostly for telemarketer fees.

Here's a link to the Charity Navigator website in case you want to look up a group before you donate.

Speaking of telemarketers, a funny story appeared in the Register a few days ago:

Gov. Chet Culver told Iowa school administrators a story on Monday about an experience he had with the New York Times early in his political career.

Culver, who ran for Iowa secretary of state in 1998, said shortly after he announced his candidacy, he received a telephone call from Bob Smith with the New York Times.

Culver said he was surprised a reporter from the newspaper was calling him when he hadn't yet done an interview with The Des Moines Register or other media outlets in the state.

Culver said he asked Smith if he could call him back, and the man said yes. The governor said he was relieved because it would give him more time to prepare for an interview. He asked Smith what he wanted to talk to him about.

"This is regarding your Sunday subscription to the New York Times," Smith told him.

There's more...

Cross posted from Future Majority - a blog about progressive youth politics.

I thought I'd weigh-in on a public battle between B. Lee Drake of the College Democrats and the College Republican National Committee.  Last week, Drake posted an op-ed accusing the CRNC of being nothing more than an ineffectual slush fund for the Republican Party:

There's more...

According to testimony by Lydia Parnes, Director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection at the Federal Trade Commission,

Consumers have registered more than 146 million telephone numbers since the Registry became operational in June 2003, and the Do Not Call program has been tremendously successful in protecting consumers' privacy from unwanted  telemarketing calls.  A Harris Interactive® Survey released in January 2006 showed that 94% of  American adults have heard of the Registry and 76% have signed up for it.29  Ninety-two percent of those polled reported receiving fewer telemarketing calls.

 Twenty-seven of the Commission's telemarketing cases have alleged Do Not Call violations, resulting in $8.8 million in civil penalties and $8.6 million in redress or disgorgement ordered.

Have you submitted a complaint?

Was it resolved?

Bottom line, however, is that politicians are exempt.

Shaun Dakin
CEO and Founder
National Political Do Not Contact Registry

There's more...

Earlier today, I cross-posted at my blog and Daily Kos a quick write-up of an interaction I had this morning during a fundraising phone call from the DCCC.

It boiled down to this. I told the caller that my policy (which was true even before I was laid off last week) is to give only to targeted candidates. It's a policy I've more or less stuck to, although I did give some money to Sen. Feingold's Progressive Patriots Fund and the DNC. I expressed some unhappiness with the passage of the funding bill, thinking that would end the call, and not really wanting to get into an argument about politics with someone who was in all likelihood a full-time phone bank caller.

That was when she asked me if I wanted the troops to be cut off from their supplies.

It escalated pretty quickly, with her claiming the President hade the veto, with me saying that no funding bill would have meant no veto, and her claiming that the troops would starve in Iraq without the funding bill. Literally, that was what she said: "starve".

There's more...