Awesome.
“The founders of the Pearl District Philanthropic Society have made a small business card you can employ when approached by someone canvassing for their cause.”
Perfect. Charity muggers are destroying the friendliness of my city. There are so many on the street I work on (and the fuckers will often stake out every corner of an intersection) that whenever someone looks like they’re going to ask you a question, your first reaction is to blank them.
End result: when people actually do need help, you ignore them. I’ve seen tourists in this city struggle to ask directions because nobody will make eye contact with them for fear of being asked to donate $20 a month, every month, for the rest of their lives to whatever cause the company they work for is being paid to spruik.
The fact is that as little as 10% of what you donate through a charity mugging firm gets through to the cause. Want evidence of the fact they don’t actually care about the charity, and just want trailing commissions? Next time you are stopped by one, offer them a one-off donation of $100. They will turn you down.
In short, charity muggers have strip-mined the natural friendliness of my city to little or no gain apart from to the companies for whom they work. Charities need to raise money, but damn, they need to do it in a better way.
This is so true!!!
1) This is what I do for a living.
2) If I weren’t doing this, I would be sitting at home, collecting unemployment from my very broke state.
3) If you offered me $100, I would kiss you on the face and call you my hero.
4) My group uses its money very effectively. It is not at all a fact that only 10% of it goes to the cause. Maybe some organizations are like that, but to assume it of all is to choose an easy way out merely because it leaves you feeling comfortable.
5) Fuck you, Pearl District Philanthropist Society.
6) I postulate that you’re angry because you don’t want to have to deal with the issue you purport to care about. Solving problems takes money. The only reason the other side isn’t asking you for your money is because they already have your money. If you don’t want to/are not able to give, that’s fine. But to make like you care, then get pissy with the people who are working on it for a living makes no sense. It makes the opposite of sense. You’re eating a nice big plate of sausages, then turning up your nose at the poor sausage factory workers. Who do you think is more unhappy at that moment of interaction on the street? For you, it lasted three seconds. For us, it lasts five hours. And it’s full of people literally urging us to fail and/or die a horrible death and/or handing us shitheel cards informing us that we matter to them so little, that they are totally fine with hurting us on an emotional level.
7) If you don’t want to talk to me, say, “No, thank you.” It’s the perfect response because it doesn’t cost you anything, it’s polite, it takes almsot no time at all, and it doesn’t reek of the self-righteous preciousness contained in this piece of shit card. Plus, it doesn’t waste paper on a pointless and mean-spirited act of being a complete asshole to a fellow human being.
