The American Presidential Campaigns are Wasting Money on a Colossal Scale

My dad has dementia, and he can no longer be at home. He needs to be in a facility that can handle his ups and downs. Dementia facilities are expensive. VERY expensive.  And far away. So I have been doing a lot of driving and thinking recently.


I was absently listening to the radio during a recent expedition, when the announcer started talking about the huge amounts of money being spent on the 2016 presidential campaign. Obscene amounts of money. For Ads. Advertisements that do and say nothing more than how much the 'other guy' stinks.


So while these donors and PACs and candidates toss money at consultants and agencies to come up with slick slogans, my family and others like us are burning through our life savings fighting a horrible mental disease that apparently is not sexy enough to have lots of money tossed at it.


And it made me sick. Sick to think of all the suffering and sickness and pain there is all around us and yet these self-proclaimed leaders spend millions on ads and jingles and buttons. Our political system is flawed and our campaign system is completely broken.


How can we stop this nonsense? If this money wasn't going toward campaign waste, how much good could it be doing ... https://twitter.com/NitpickyConsumr

Network for Good ... or Bad?

ho-ho-ho, merry donations

Back in 2009, when I did my Christmas Charity donations, I paid directly to the charities on their own online websites. For my 2010 donation bonanza, I decided to try something different, in the form of
Network for Good.

Network for Good is a 'one-stop-shop' donation website, connected to over a million charities. The idea is simple: instead of going to a bunch of sites and filling out a bunch of forms, go to one site and do it all there. It works like a store for donations. Pick your charity, set the donation amount, and add it to your cart. Just like Amazon. Sort of.

I decided that this was worth a try.

On December 22, 2010, I browsed to the Network for Good website. A Giant Banner informed me that THERE IS STILL TIME TO DONATE FOR THE 2010 TAX YEAR, so I had no fear that I was too late to use the service. I created a profile, logged on, and used Network for Good to donate to 10 Organizations. I also added an 11th "donation" to Network for Good so that 100% of my money would be passed to the charities (as opposed to some of it being used to handle processing fees).

I got my receipt on screen and via e-mail. All was good.

Then, in late January 2011, I started to receive confirmations of my donations from my various charities with statements like "Thank you for your donation made on January 20, 2011 via Network for Good"  Excuse me? I made these donations back in December 2010. What was going on?

I immediately wrote to Network for Good:

I tried you for the first time back on December 22, 2010 (see receipt below),
but now I am not so happy about it.I am starting to receive confirmation emails from my various charities and I am not liking what I am seeing.


1) Why is there such a lag between my donation and its delivery to at least some of the various charities? I haven't received letters from some of them, so I am wondering if some haven't even received it yet???? I'm feeling the need to start contacting some of them to find and, and I'm not happy about this. Your tax page clearly says that I could donate up to Dec 31 for that tax year, but now I have conflicting documentation. This puts me in an awkward tax situation. I have your receipt and I have theirs, and they do not match.


2) Why was money taken away from my donations???
I paid the extra money to Network for Good so that 100% of my donations would go to my charities. But that is not what happened. Network for Good STILL took money.  e.g., I donated $25 to Rails-to-Trails, BUT my receipt from them says that I only donated $24.79. What happened? So now, not only do the dates not match, the numbers don't match either.


Could you please explain these discrepancies, as soon as possible?

I got a response pretty quickly:

Thank you for your inquiry.


1.) Let me explain how it works. For tax purposes, it goes by the date that you MADE the donation, not the date that the nonprofit received it. When you made your donation, you received a receipt via email with the date of the donation, amount, etc & that is what you use for tax purposes. What the nonprofit sends you is just an acknowledgement-you do not use that for your taxes. We pay the nonprofits on the 15th of the following month for all donations made in the entire previous month. The only reasons a nonprofit would not have received the check from us is if they moved and did not change their address with us or it got lost in the mail. I can tell you that out of all the donations you made on December 22, only one is not showing as having cashed the check Either they didn't receive it or they are holding on to it. It is up to them as to when they send out their thank you acknowledgements to the donors.

2.) Rails-to-Trails gave you the incorrect amount as they received 100% of your donation so their email should have said $25, not $24.79. They may not realize that the donors cover the fee for them as we changed that policy back in the summer of 2010. Once again, do not go by their email, go by the receipt that we sent you.

What am I supposed to think, now? I'm still not happy with this math ...

• I've got 10 organizations that I've donated to.
• Of these, I've only heard from 5 of them so far. Did the others really get the money, like Network for Good says? Or did they not? I guess I need to manually followup with all of them? GAD.
• Of these 5, they report receiving the money on various dates between Jan 14 and Feb 17. This does not jive AT ALL with Network for Good's assertion that all money was transferred the 15th of the next month ... i.e., on Jan 15, 2011. How could one group receive the money BEFORE the official transfer date, while another received it over a month later? [This 15th of the month revelation is in fact on the NfG site, but it is only available 3 levels down in the online FAQs, which are available from the Network for Good Help link, which is in small print in the footer. I don't think I'm alone in assuming that my donation was going to be transferred in a few days.]
• What about the one that says they received less than I sent to them?  She is saying to not believe Rails-to-Trails, that they really got $25. But they are saying that they only got $24.79. Who do I believe? I've written to R-to-T twice, but haven't heard back. I don't know if they are researching it, or if their responses are disappearing into my massive SPAM folder. Eventually, I'll figure this out, but this is a massive pain. 
• And, what about the one that NfG says didn't cash the money?  This was Animal Welfare League of Alexandria. I followed up with them, asking why they hadn't cashed the check, and they were baffled by my question. They assured me that they had cashed the check within two days of getting it and it was in their bank account. So who do I believe? Do they really have the money ... or not?

So, bottomline, I have no decisive conclusions. Only doubt. Enough doubt that this coming December 2011, I'll be going back to my site by site approach from 2009. As Ripley so memorably said in Aliens, "It's the Only Way to be Sure."

Has anyone else donated through Network for Good? I'd be interested in hearing your experience.

Nice Try, LLS, but I've got a pretty good memory

The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society called me this morning to ask for a donation.

Unfortunately for them, I haven't forgotten how I was treated last year by LLS. But perhaps I'll look around for another worthy Leukemia group that I could donate to. My friend Beccy in England is waging a pretty good fight with the disease, so I'd like to support her.

Anyone have any recommendations?

Christmas Contributions, Ho-ho-ho!

Due to a somewhat complex family schedule this year, I'm in the rather unique position of spending Christmas day alone. In the spirit of the season, I decided to spend the day doing my final charitable donations of 2009. While some of the smaller groups (our local fire department, for example) still only take checks, many other groups have online donation sites that make giving a snap.

Here are some of the online donation sites I used today, with a brief review of my experience.

National Parks Foundation has a clear, easy-to-use form and a nifty printable holiday certificate. I got a little bit lost in their holiday screen saver promotion, but the 'donate' button was always obvious, even if it moved around a bit. What I actually really liked about them was the choice to not get the 'other stuff' that often comes with a donation. (e.g., paper newsletter, etc.). I love the national parks; I grew up close to Catoctin Mountain Park and went hiking there many times a year.

Chesapeake Bay Foundation has a lot of confusing choices (Join, Renew, Support, Donate) that all actually lead to the same place. But once you got to that place, they had a really fabulous printable receipt that was just gorgeous. (For you tech geeks out there, it was a PDF-on-the-fly.) I participated in a lot of their educational programs while growing up in Maryland, so it's important to me to support them so that students today may enjoy the same opportunity.

The National Capital Poison Center (the folks who used to use the "Mr. Yuk" stickers back in the 70s) have a pretty low-budget website compared to the first two groups I visited, but it got the job done. There was a funny 'loop' at the end when you jumped back to their site from their payment vendor's site (PayPal's Link product), but it didn't cause an issue. The donation worked and the receipt was emailed. I have a place in my hear for the poison center because they walked me through dealing with my husband when he got exposed to some toxic fumes a few years ago.

The Rails-to-Trails Conservancy has a basic, easy form. The one bummer was that I couldn't sign up with a name different than the name on my credit card. I like to use my married-name when giving donations, but my cards are all in my maiden name. Oh well. I love their magazine. It gives a lot of useful info and maps about the trails.

The Carolina Annual Fund (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) has about a zillion funds that you can restrict your money to. I always do this, because otherwise I am afraid that unrestricted money may go towards something wacky like paying an 'artist in residence' to put a row of toilets on the main quad, or something like that. So, anyways, the interface to find your fund is a bit confusing. They need a 'map'. I knew I wanted 'study abroad' as one of them, but I didn't realize it fell under Arts & Sciences and they even changed the fund code from last year (sneaky) so it took me a while to find it. But find it I did, and then the form even let me enter a second fund, so that was really slick. This form is VERY complex, because donations to giant universities can in fact get VERY complex. Interesting enough, after all this complexity, the site then transferred me over to the same 3rd party processor that poison.org used. But it all worked out and UNC has yet more of my money.

Natural Resources Defense Council has a very simple one-click, one-page form. Too simple, in fact. My confirmation page said only 'Thank you so much for continuing your support of NRDC' and left out any mention of the amount. Doh! But it was OK, as my email receipt had all those juicy details in it just fine. I definitely shouldn't complain about a group who thanks me for my donation, unlike some other charity I know.

Father Martin's Ashley is a beautiful website that really shows off what an amazing place this is. Donation process was multi-step but clean. A nice printable page at the end, with a note that an email had also been sent to me. Nice touch. No one else said that.

Wikipedia has a very simple one-page form on its foundation site, but what made it interesting to me was that you could pick a currency besides US Dollar. It really underscores the world-wide breadth of the Wiki. Wait ... something else interesting about this one. My card was declined. Hmm. Odd. I called my card's automated line and it noted that my card had been temporarily turned off till they could verify that this transaction was legitimate. Yuck. I wonder if a lot of non-legitimate transactions go through this site? Well, I believe in Wiki, so I tried again after clearing the block. No luck. It put the block back on. But wait ... my card company says the charge did go through. OK, so this is definitely my least favorite donation form, but I'm sure it will all work out, eventually.

So, to sum up ...

With just a few clicks, all but one of these worthy organizations received a gift from me, instantly. Wow. I love the Internet. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Attention Charities: Please remember to be charitable, yourselves

After a long hiatus due to work and family, the holidays have brought me back into the blogging chair. My first topic: Charities.

Due to the recession, these groups are working extra hard to bring in donations, but they seem to be forgetting the very issue that is causing them to work so hard. That is, for the people who are out of work, donations may simply not be an option. If someone says 'No,' they probably mean NO. So, you'd think that these groups would move on. But not all of them.

Let's take the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society as my example.

My mother's high school friend died of Leukemia. A British friend of mine is currently struggling with it. Therefore, I decided to make a donation to them this past March. Not huge. I think maybe $50? My husband's job was looking quite iffy at that point, so I didn't want to stretch it.

The first thing that struck me was that I almost threw away my receipt. It looked just like another solicitation,and I almost trashed it given I had just donated. But on a hunch I opened it, and in very small print was my receipt. I'm not even sure it said 'Thank You." If so, it was dwarfed by the huge "WE NEED MORE MONEY" above it.

We've gotten non-stop calls from them since then. My husband usually picks up the phone, so he's simply been telling them that I wasn't home. But this past week, I happened to be the one who picked up the phone. I was also the one who hung up on them 5 minutes later.

Here's a summary of our conversation:

LLS Caller: Hi, LLS needs more money.

Me: Didn't I donate to you already this year?

LLS Caller: Yes, but we need more money.

Me: Sorry, I only donate to each charity once a year. Call me back in 2010.

LLS Caller: You don't understand. We need more money

Me: No, you don't understand. I already gave you money.

LLS Caller: No, you don't understand. We have a donor who agreed to match all donations, so we need more money now.

Me: That's great. Hopefully that offer will still be on the table in 2010.

LLS Caller: No, it won't be. We need your money now.

Me: Sorry, it's not going to happen. My husband was laid off in May. I am working from a budget.

LLS Caller: I understand, but we need money now.

Me: I've already told you I am not going to give you more money this year. I'd like to end this conversation, now.

LLS Caller: We need your money. We can't wait

Me: I'm going to hang up on you, now.

LLS Caller: Don't you understand? We need your mon--

[Blissful Silence]

Maybe I'm not being sensitive to the urgent need. Maybe I'll be the one labeled as the Scrooge. But honestly, how much good am I doing to anyone if my family and I end up needing charity, ourselves?

Please, all you non-profits out there, please remember that you're not the only ones struggling. I recommend treating each donation as a gift rather than an entitlement. You might even get more money that way, in the long run.