Comments

1
Wow, according to that table, using Coinstar is nearly as charitable as giving money to a street canvaser.
2
Better yet, buy a bum some food and coffee...
3
GOOD POST

HUMAN FUCKING SPAM

0:20 - http://tinyurl.com/2fee9o5
4
Plus the bums rarely get so in your face and attack you when you're just trying to walk! Ugh, I hate "binder people" / "human spam"!!!!
5
Is it really necessary to dehumanize anybody, even if they work as beggars for a shitty company that preys on people's impulse toward charity? Come on.
6
If the bum spends it on hard liquor, the state gets a nice cut as well, and we all win.

@5 - The "human spam" folks are merely workers. The bum is an entrepreneur. In Republican America that makes him nearly a god.
7
Unicef.org if you want to give to a worthy charity.
8
riffing on #6...
If the bum buys meth or pot, than the narco gangs in Mexico get a sweet cut to buy more guns to kill people!
If the bum buys heroin then the Taliban gets a nice cut as well.
9
Funny, i JUST was in a conversation with a jacket-tugger in front of the Fremont PCC who had a clipboard with PP info on it. She was VERY persuasive, but I told her no less than three times that my fiancee is a regular donor to PP (the Dog's honest truth - she and I have our respective causes to which we donate monthly). I had been reading SLOG on my phone just moments before, but had skipped this story. I wish I had read it before speaking with her.

I think some more useful advice here, Dan, would be to urge SLOG readers to tell these agents that s/he will be donating directly to the cause, and WHY.

re: calling these people Spam: well, Dan, I have to disagree with you somewhat. Not because she was obviously a real, breathing human being and not a NIgerian email scam, but because in this time of high unemployment, I've gotta have just a smidgen of sympathy for people who have the unenviable job of standing in front of stores in the cold, bugging people all day. We can all be sure she isn't make millions and she doesn't have the benefits that some of us enjoy in our f/t gigs.
It's not like she works for Mohawk DIversified:
http://www.npr.org/2010/11/30/131704368/…
10
@5: the people that work for these "charitable organizations" are lazy neo-hippy bums who honestly think they're helping society while essentially not working and smoking up the trust fund daddy set up for them. Trust me, I know, I dated one for many years while I was too busy with medical school to realize the piss stain piece of shit leeching off me was a go-nowhere loser.
11
In a time of serious desperation I once worked for Grassroots Campaigns. The people who run the Seattle office are very nice, and truly believe that they are working for the greater good. They do their best to make sure their employees are as safe as possible, and try to keep up morale as much as possible.
The job is awful. It's like being a telemarketer that can physically see the people shunning and verbally abusing them. I canvassed for planned parenthood and was called a babykiller by several total strangers, close to being physically assaulted by a methed out homeless person and knocked over by overzealous tourists, not to mention standing out in the boiling hot sun (this was in the summertime)....All for minimum wage. For god's sake, at least be polite the poor kid being desperately begging for donations for 8 hours a day so they can pay their rent/make a very small dent in their student loans. You don't have to sit and listen to them, but at least throw them a little 'have a good one' every so often.

Also, keep in mind that these companies hire Grassroots to canvas for them, it's not like the company is pretending to work for charities and then keep all of that money for themselves.
13
@10: Your first clue that something was amiss should have been the fact that someone with plenty of money and loads of free time was interested in dating someone in medical school.
14
This hasn't made it up here yet - to me, canvasser still means the nice man from down the block who volunteers his time to go door to door for the Heart Foundation. I did it for years myself for the Lung Association. This sounds like an even worse job than being a telemarketer - horrible.
15
These people are worst than Nazis. And we killed Nazis.
16
I was a canvasser in the late 80's. I was pretty good at it. It convinced me not to give money to them when they came to my door though. I always offer them a drink though.

The percentage of money that goes to the organizations that don't outsource their canvassing is not as horrendous as what you cite, but it is still awful. The canvasser keeps about 1/2 of what they take in. Another chunk goes to support the office and the non-canvassing staff (usually that is not many people, and often even the bosses will canvass part time so that there is no more than one full time salary paid out of what other people raise). The rest is then passed up the chain where it goes to pay for other administrative staff and then pays the salary for maybe one full time lobbyist.

The best thing the canvassers can do is organize letter writing campaigns. This is actually effective, unlike most of the other stuff they do. Unfortunately, in my time, canvassers were not compensated for the letter writing they organized. This may have changed according to some conversations I have had with canvassers recently. A lack of compensation and even credit for getting letters meant that most canvassers did not care about getting the letters because they needed to spend their time making quota.

Anyway, the take away message is that if you have someone come to the door representing a cause you care about, sign the petition, give them a drink of some kind, offer your bathroom if you are so inclined, and write any letters they are collecting for causes you support. Just don't give them money. If you are the type who has pot around (I am not), they would generally love that as well.

My personal policy is give the canvassers some money if they are pushing the letter issue hard enough. When I give it to them I specify that is for their pocket and not for the organization and that I gave it to them in exchange for their letter writing effort. Someone needs to underwrite the only useful part of their job.
17
The other $867k went to the so-called "tea party." This grassroots crap is a front for the GOP/TP.
18
A somewhat related question ... does anyone really know how political groups that solicit online use the money? I've stopped giving to MoveOn and similar groups because I can't find an answer.
19
One might start here:

http://www.charitynavigator.org/

(though I can't find moveon...)
20
at least the money you give bums goes right back into the local economy.

Unless your local economy produces heroin and crack, a lot of that money is going straight to Afghanistan and South America.

The food and booze money will mostly stay in the U.S.
21
I feel bad for the people making a living though canvassing the sidewalks, but they often make me wish that the city council had passed the aggressive solicitation ordinance that everyone hated so much.
22
@20: If you buy a $20 bag of heroin, probably less than $2 of that is going to Afghanistan or wherever it was produced. The serious markup of prices is done by your friendly neighborhood drug dealer. So most of the money does indeed stay in the local economy.
23
The Red Cross kids in downtown are fucking relentless. I really resent the fact that they take advantage of my peculiar habit of making eye contact and acknowledging people that speak to me on the street (as I keep moving) even if I don't want to talk to them.
24
ACLU sucks donkey dick
25
I hate self perpetuating canvass machines with a passion. It poisons the well, so to speak. I worked for and ran non-partisan voter registration programs in Portland and we always had issues with people thinking we were working for Grassroots Campaigns or some awful similar group. People don't want to engage in a public conversation when they are being hit up for cash.

I'm all for free speech, so I don't want to ban suck canvassing, but I wish people would stop giving them money. Canvassing can be a really good tactic for issue advocacy, voter registration and the like. It's a terrible way to raise money. Also, if organizations want to canvass, using volunteers or well trained staff, it will be WAY more effective.
26
I love you hon, but fuck you for the human spam comment. I worked for GCI during the 2008 election season and it was very tough, draining physical and mental work that required extensive personal skills for not much money, but I can tell you that every canvasser I worked with actually believed in the cause they're raising money for, and as far as we knew the money went straight to where it was supposed to go. There were tons of regulations we as peons had to follow, so any and all corruption that occurred with GCI occurred with the administrative portion.
27
@26

Yes, canvassing is hard. It is hard both mentally and physically. It takes an emotional toll as well. I also agree that the people who do it believe in the causes for which they canvass.

None of these things make canvassing for money a good way to raise money for charities/causes or mean that it is an effective way for donors to direct their money. Read what I wrote in #16 and what #25 wrote as well. The point is that too much money is used up through administrative costs including the canvassers salary. It is not a question of corruption, just one of how the organization spends the money it gets due its organizational structure.

Sure, Dan is being a douche when labels people human spam. That is just a result of his delicate sensibilities making it hard for him to go through certain types of human interactions. But the inherent nobility of the wild canvasser does not mean that canvassing is a good idea for fund raising.
28
How timely! I would find it easier to be upset at the "human spam" label if a kind-hearted little canvasser didn't yell profanities up the street at me after I made the convenient excuse that it was "too cold" to stop and listen to her spiel the other night. That was some sales pitch, for sure!
29
i ve stopped giving money to any allegedly nonprofit charity long ago. this is what s called false generosity through which the unfair distribution of the system is perpetuated to a point of creating and maintaining superficial social stability. i was appalled when one of my friends told me the fastest way to snowball your money is to establish your own charity, and self-appoint as president. You have all the volunteers working for your "cause" for free, and set up all the associations with other humongous cooperation and banks that hope to sell their products via a humanistic facade. 5 years is a first stage, and after that you 'll start having money coming in. no wonder i m not surprised by this fact in this post.
it s a better idea to work or volunteer or participate the community activities whose purpose is not to solicit money but directly in touch with people.
30
oops, unfinished sentence. ..in touch with the people who are in need or more precisely, who are helping each other.
31
Oi! Maybe you don't know how nonprofits work, but the donations collected by those (admittedly obnoxious) canvassers go to general operating costs for those nonprofits. THERE ARE NO GRANTS to pay for facilities rental, electricity, internet - all the things that for-profit businesses can use their profits for. Grants pay for actual services, and the money received from those grants is divvied up strictly to programming that affects clientele and the general public. This money keeps those actual nonprofit chapters in business, allowing them to serve the clients that their grant/foundation funding actually goes to.
32
Another ex-canvasser here. It's true that canvassing is a terrible way to raise money, but nonprofits and political parties hire canvassing outfits in order to build name-recognition and build their lists. Nobody is getting ripped off. It's much more effective to fundraise from a list of people who have already donated, especially if those people all cared enough about the issue to talk to some annoying clipboard holder.

Here's the thing: Canvassing is a way for young people *without* trust funds to get into politics. For people who can't take an unpaid internship because they have to pay for their own damn lives, this is a pretty great way to build your skills and prepare for campaign work -- or pay the rent between campaigns. If you want to ensure that America's future political workers all come from wealthy backgrounds, by all means, outlaw canvassing.

Every single person I worked with supported themselves
with their earnings. Most were recent college graduates from lower-middle-class and working-class families. I had the misfortune to finish my service in the Peace Corps right about the time Lehman Brothers went under. My relevant experience for most jobs was three years out of date and -- oh shit -- nobody was hiring. I was lucky to be able to find a job that, despite being incredibly emotionally draining, allowed me to build my communication and management skills. It was not my best job ever, but it was a hell of a lot less demeaning in the long run than the secretarial work I used to do. I paid my taxes and built a huge list of gay marriage supporters for the local Democratic party. Someone's gotta do the grunt work of organizing, and you sure as hell know volunteers won't.

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