Mr. Thrifty is a big advocate of giving to charity.  In a future guide, Mr. Thrifty plans on writing an extensive guide on you to get the most out of giving to charity.  One of the things, however, that frustrates Mr. Thrifty about a lot of charities is that when you donate and they collect your personal information, they turn around and rent it out to other charities and junk mailers.  Note that not every charity does this but it seems to be a pretty common practice.  A good example of this is that a little while ago Mr. Thrifty made a donation to a Tsunami relief organization.  Since then, Mr. Thrifty has been bombarded with junk mail from other Tsunami organizations.  Junk mail does NOT make Mr. Thrifty happy.

The best way to handle this is when you make your first donation to a new charity, enclose a brief note asking that the organization not rent, sell or exchange your name with anyone.  It is not 100% fool proof, but it can prevent your information from getting shared around.  In order to expedite this, Mr. Thrifty has a letter saved on his hard drive that he simple hits print and includes with his donation.  It looks something like this:

Date

 

Dear (Name of Charity),

Enclosed is a donation to your cause.  I strongly support your mission to (insert mission of charity) and hope to support you more in the future.

With this donation, I ask you a favor to not rent, sell, exchange or in anyway transmit my personal information to any organization outside of yours with out my written permission.  Of course, you may share my information as required by law or with the IRS for tax purposes.  If you do not think you can comply with this request, I would appreciate it if you would return my donation.

Thank you for your help!

Sincerely,

Mr. Thrifty