That time of the year again: United Way begging

This year, I ditched my donation to United Way in favor of the SPCA and I feel better! This is where my dear cat comes from, so it made more sense to me to give to a charity for pets.

UGH. I saw this in my work email yesterday. I work at a Catholic hospital, so the begging is especially intense and annoying. What gets me is where they say "You can specify a charity to donate to!" WHY would you do this and give UW a cut? Donate DIRECTLY to your charities of choice.

I NEVER donate to the United Way. I've told my Boy's and Girl's Club story before as to why. I don't want my money going to entertain, feed and help the rough ass, gang-like, welfare kids that our money already goes to in taxes. Why should these moos get free babysitting, tutoring, and snacks for their kids? It's not like the kids are at the B&G Club while moo is a work. Moo is home enjoying yet a few more hours without her mistake. Whew! That's better! I hate the United Way!

I donate to a local spaying and neutering service that spays strays and the animals of low income people who wouldn't normally spay their pet without assistance. I look at it as giving to the animal and not the person in that case.

A friend of mine gives to his company's UW drive every year, but writes in the area for "special requests", and he always puts:

Donation to be used for the obtainment of abortion services ONLY.

The Phan Wrote:
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> A friend of mine gives to his company's UW drive
> every year, but writes in the area for "special
> requests", and he always puts:
>
> Donation to be used for the obtainment of abortion
> services ONLY.


That won't happen. UW is a huge breeder pleaser!

That's hilarious, Phan. Too bad there's a bigger chance of the planet exploding tomorrow. The folks at UW probably read that, laugh, and then give the donation to whatever breeder charity is the trendiest this year.

You can specify which charity your UW "donation" goes to. At least in my area, they list of all the charities on the back of the sign up form, and there are even a few which aren't child oriented. When I participate in the UW campaign at my workplace, I always specify that my funds go to the Humane Society.

That said, the UW certianly isn't the best use of your donation dollars, I believe less than half of every dollar goes to charity, the rest going to the UW's administrative costs. It's always better to just donate directly.

"It truly is the one commonality that every designation of humans you can think of has, there's at least one asshole."
--Me

Yea, well FUCK the United Way and their money grab. Those bastards fund animal testing. http://www.flashback.se/archive/foundations.html

My company has a big drive where they try to strong arm us into giving. I wrote on my donation form that I DO NOT give to charities that fund animal testing in any way, shape, or form.

The only charities we give to are animal charities. PERIOD.

The Salvatian Army gets all our unwanted clothing/household things.

KidFreeLuvnLife Wrote:
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> Yea, well FUCK the United Way and their money
> grab. Those bastards fund animal testing.
> http://www.flashback.se/archive/foundations.html
>
> My company has a big drive where they try to
> strong arm us into giving. I wrote on my donation
> form that I DO NOT give to charities that fund
> animal testing in any way, shape, or form.
>
> The only charities we give to are animal
> charities. PERIOD.
>
> The Salvatian Army gets all our unwanted
> clothing/household things.

Wow. Us too. Only we donate to the Amvets. Used to be you could get a directory of cruelty free products and companies.

"You can't slit the throat of every cocksucker whose character it would improve."
-Al Swearingen

You can still get that directory, RR. Here's a link with tons of resources.

http://www.caringconsumer.com/

Not only does animal testing piss me off to no end, but it only accounts for 5% of medical advancements.

I feel especially smug when I hear of a class-action lawsuit against a drug company. Yep, bet they sure are glad they performed all those animal-based tests! See where it got them!

When I worked in industry at a fairly large company, I used to hate the annual United Way "consolidated appeal" crap and the strongarm tactics these people used to browbeat employees into donating.

We now give directly to local charities doing what we believe is important work for animals--a cat rescue program and a sanctuary that does rehab and release of injured birds and other wildlife.

I agree with the sentiment already mentioned that enough of my tax dollars already go to social services and related programs--so these organizations won't get another nickel from me.

The Cabot Library in the Science Center where I work has this hard-bound brochure-propaganda thingy in their reference section that discusses why animal testing is so great and where would society be if we hadn't got rid of smallpox and polio. It is riddled with photos of terd-world chyldrun with faces full of pustulating sores and what-not. Nowhere does it share graphic descriptions of what the animals go through. I am not a big PETA fan (I used to send them a few $ once or twice a year, but I stopped because they are well-funded by high-profile celebrities. Although they are a bit extreme and I don't agree with their actions and standpoints on all issues, they do a lot of legislative and investigative work that someone needs to do, and is out of the scope of local rescue/TNR-type of orgs such as the one I volunteer with), BUT I think I should get hold of some of their propaganda and stuff it into that portfolio.

There is just NO way to escape the Evil Empire...

At my last job, being the HR rep, taking care of the UW drive at our office was part of my work. Gawds, I hated it so much! I only did the bare minimum required of me, like hand out and collect donation cards to/from the employees. I always stressed that it was totally optional and I never put pressure on anybody.

But it was still "expected" of ME to contribute, to "lead by example" somewhat. I resented that. Felt like extortion. They come up with all these goals you have to reach, and you have to keep statistics. I was afraid because my boss could have used that in my performance evaluation, like I didn't do my job well and didn't try hard enough. Sorry, but begging people for money was NOT what I signed up for!

My employer had a big falling out with United Way last year and the managers are no longer soliciting for donations. From what I hear, the local United Way is in the middle of a scandal about how much they pay their executive director.

I don't give a dime to those greedy assholes. I give to the local no-kill shelter and the adult literacy project instead.

I am thankful I no longer work in an office where I am subject to this corrupt strong-arm charity.

The United Way is a relic from the pre-Internet age. It is unnecessary, redundant, and wastes donors' monies that could, as many have said, be more profitably donated directly. The United Way in my community is well larded with layer upon layer of administrator, all of whom shuffle papers around and make phone calls for five or six figures a year--paid with donor money. Two scandals in my community too, of embezzlement for those for whom just suckin' the teat in a cushy job wasn't good enough. I'd like to sentence those people to working in a coal mine for the rest of their days. I will never give another dime to this organization.

But the Arbor Day Foundation will get some cash as usual. (Plus they send me li'l trees!)

I HATE United Way for many many many reasons, but I especially hate the strong arm coercive tactics that they encourage and condone of the national companies who do their dirty collections. I was naive' the first and only time I succumbed to The United Way and it was in the early eighties when I worked as a loan clerk in a bank while in college. I made about $300 every two weeks and out of that of course came the normal deductions including taxes, savings, retirement, insurance, etc....., so I didn't exactly have much income to donate in the first place.The bank had a literal public CAMPAIGN and their goal was to get every single employee, there were about 250 in my division, to pledge 1%-3%of their gross income per pay period via auto payroll deduction by the first of the year. They started harrassing us in October with flyers, a MANDATORY 2 hour long presentation from a UW representative including starving chylrrenn in a third world country, pamphlets and other propaganda in our payroll envelopes, a HUGE billboard inside the bank which had departments broken down into sections/number of employees/payroll amounts pledged, and what percentage of employees in each department had pledged and how much overall and they updated it daily. They instructed the heads of departments to harrass us on a daily basis to sign up as they were all competing with one another.

It wasn't until months later that I realized that the reason that the heads of departments were "in" on this harrassament and so damned gung ho about it is that they were basically getting a kickback in the form of cash, paid leave, and hotel accomodations at the beach and other nice places depending on the percentage of their underlings' pledges with a GRAND prize being 2k cash "bonus", a week extra paid vacation that following year, and an all expense paid trip to one of numerous resorts. I realize this was the bank that backed up these "incentives", but that's because of the HUGE tax writeoff they were getting, not to mention the free publicity and the good public relations. So, peons like myself who were struggling to cough up 1-3% of our already meager salary didn't get SHIT, while the executives who were coercing us had everything to gain.

The tactic must have worked because I am pretty sure that several departments had 100% employee participation and there were only a few who didn't, but even they still had over 90% opt to donate. When I found out how that shit worked I was HIGHLY pissed off and resented it even more, so I dropped my "donation". Of course they couldn't have cared less at that point about their lofty cause because by then the contest was over.

The beggers (employees mandated to bug us) came early today to "sell" candies in bags for 1$. I refused to buy one. First, I don't believe in UW. Second, the candy was crappy (according to the ones that were dumb enough to buy them). Third, we already have good quality candy in our dept.
I suspect it's only going to get worse. I told them I already gave to another charity: the SPCA. Humans choose their path, I don't have to make up for their poor life choices. Many animals that end up there suffered abuse or neglegt and didn't choose what happened to them. I much prefer animals to humans.

I worked for a big retailer in the 90's. If you did not donate, it was suggested you might not get a full raise.
I hate fucking blackmail, so I opted to challenge. When evaluation time came around and my almost perfect eval, reflected a small raise. I had my lawyer call , I got my raise and 6 months later laid off. Best fucking thing that ever happened to me. Those bastards.

annie35 Wrote:
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> I worked for a big retailer in the 90's. If you
> did not donate, it was suggested you might not get
> a full raise.
> I hate fucking blackmail, so I opted to challenge.
> When evaluation time came around and my almost
> perfect eval, reflected a small raise. I had my
> lawyer call , I got my raise and 6 months later
> laid off. Best fucking thing that ever happened to
> me. Those bastards.


They did the same fucking thing to us because this was back in the days where strong arm tactics worked and there were no legal precedents against it like there are now. First of all they had a print out of each and every employee name/number, how much they had donated (or not), and our annual salaries. They would literally confront each and every employee in their department, often while bank customers were standing there, other employees were present, or at the very least when one or both were within earshot. They would say shit like, "Kim, I noticed that you haven't signed up to help United Way yet, can we count on you for $15 A MONTH? Surely you can do THAT much, it's ONLY 50 cents a day". Then they would spout off a spiel which amounted to a canned sales pitch regarding all of the wonderful work that United Way had done. If that didn't work then they would go the route that everyone ELSE had made THEIR pledges, if YOU sign up then we will be 100%. which of course was a lie as they told that to everyone. I worked next to the teller windows and my favorite teller was a 20 something black woman with 3 kyds and as many baybee daddys. She would BOLDLY say, "That sounds nice, but that $15 could feed my kyds for a week! I am sorry, but charity starts at home!". I always admired her answer as it would keep the sharks off of her back from everything from The United Way campaigns to these mindless office "collections".

The one thing they loaded us down with which I considered worse than the United WAY shit was these periodical community "fund raisers". Business owners and Presidents of companies would "donate" a few hours to be waiters at the local country club for local charities, USUALLY kiddie related, and we were made to solicit pledges from customers. Most of these men (I never knew any women to be a part of it) were quite wealthy and got a LOT of publicity not to mention tax write offs. All of this solicitation (in their names) for doing nothing more than acting like silly old farts and "playing waiter" for a night while they steadily got drunk as the "real waiters" actually served the $500 a plate meals to their rich friends. I found this especially demeaning to the country club employees for several reasons. 1)They were all black and dressed in civil war type traditional and formal servant attire, 2)The rich white men were "tipping" their buddy business men "waiters" with hundred dollar bills right under the REAL waiters' eyes(which of course was going straight to charity) and THEN barely leaving the REAL waiters a minimum tip which usually amounted to $3-$5. 3)It was mocking the working people by making fun of their jobs with the whole atmosphere/attitude being "....what a JOKE and OH so HILARIOUS that someone big, wealthy, and important like me would be reduced to being a waiter..EGADS!!!!!!". Too bad they could go home and leave the mess for the real staff to clean up.

My GOD I hated that shit and wonder if it still goes on.