By Susan Anderson-Khleif
There is a new pitch afoot. It’s in your email, it’s in TV commercials. It’s relentless. What is it?
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It is a broad array of organizations asking us to pledge $19 a month for a good cause to charities and other humanitarian organizations. The usual ask is $19 a month, “only 63 cents a day.”
Sometimes it’s another amount, but 19 seems to be the new magic number.
They are all good causes, usually. Donations are sought for children’s hospitals, animal rescues, veterans, public television stations, refugees, cancer research or an array of other charitable organizations. It’s a long list.
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And now political parties are doing it, too. I get almost daily emails for political donations! They used to have a membership fee, but now they want the “membership” renewed every month.
Churches are also doing it – requesting monthly donations through automatic banking, not just relying on passing the basket at the service. That’s OK, I suppose. No missing the basket with cash if not there that week.
It used to be most organizations had annual or semiannual fundraising drives – or had some pledging system. But that required on people fulfilling their pledges.
The new method is to get people to sign up for regular monthly donations. Not just pledges, but authorizing automatic deductions from your banking account or monthly charges onto your credit card.
Well, we are certainly a nation of charitable donators. So the idea of giving to worthy causes is not new, and many of us donate to our favorite charities.
But the pressure to make automatic, online monthly donations is a new ballgame. Why is this a problem?
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Well, most appeals are cleverly designed to pull on the heart strings. And with easy online sign up processes, before we know it, we’ve taken on quite a burden of automatic monthly payments! They add up. And with these deductions buried in checking accounts and credit card bills, it’s easy to lose track of the total.
And further, it’s probably easy for these appeals for donations to prey on the heart strings of the bereaved, those living alone or others who are emotionally vulnerable. That’s a big concern of mine. I am certainly tempted by some of these appeals. Therefore I am on the alert to avoid them.
Furthermore, online streaming entertainment channels require online automatic monthly fees, so that’s another source of costs that get lost on credit cards or cable bills. There are lots of online purchases that involve companies that try to get you signed up for regular shipments or subscriptions, not just a one time purchase.
So the point is: There is financial danger in this fairly new online monthly signup trend. Before we know it, we’ve taken on a whole new large category of monthly bills, possibly draining funds more needed for other purposes.
My own approach is to avoid these automatic charitable deductions, and just send a check or otherwise donate to my selected charities. I better check into my online streaming bills! Lol.
• Susan Anderson-Khleif of Sleepy Hollow has a doctorate in family sociology from Harvard, taught at Wellesley College and is a retired Motorola executive. Contact her at [email protected] or see her blog at longtermgrief.tumblr.com. See previous columns at dailyherald.com/topics/Anderson-Kleif-Susan.
Source: https://t-tees.com
Category: WHY
