In the Red

When Terri Schiavo was killed in March of 2005, I sent a $100 donation to one of the numerous Catholic Pro-life groups active in that fight. I felt satisfied that I did something, however meager, and as long as I could afford it, I decided I would contribute every now and then.

Well, I never did. Our family does about 99 percent of our charity by donating to and through our local parish. The amount has fluctuated over the years due to the varying economic circumstances we find ourselves in. And though we don’t come close to the magical 10% figure for tithing (thanks to unemployment, multiple children, high taxes, high mortgage, etc), I’m not guilty over our level of giving.

But there is one thing about the whole $100 donation that bugs me to no end. On a daily basis, in fact. You see, that pro-life organization put me on a mailing list. So every day, on average, I get something from someone looking for money.

Now, I don’t begrudge them this. Every week I get anywhere from a half-dozen to a dozen letters asking for a contribution. In return, I get religious-themed stamps, religious-themed address labels, prayer cards, newsletters, Catholic voting guides, Congressional voting records, the occasional pamphlet, the occasional rosary. (The pink rosaries I give to my daughters.) I even got a small 65-page book that I read over the summer and gave me some peace of mind. In return, I sent that particular group a $10 donation. And thus put myself on even more mailing lists.

Here’s my concern. Let’s say I get one piece of mail a day. They probably qualify for business discounts in their postage, but a lot of the stuff I get is bigger than a regular mailing envelope. So, for simplicity’s sake, let’s say each piece of mail I get costs the organization on average 44 cents, the price of a normal stamp.

So, these groups are spending $160 a year on postage to send me solicitations for money. It’ll be six years at the end of this month that Terri Schiavo was put to death and I donated that money. Since then, pro-life groups have spent about $960 on postage alone (forget printing and other manufacturing costs) to get their donation requests into my mailbox.

$110 - $960 = $850 in the red. Losses. Write-offs. Even if I’m overestimating all this by a hundred percent, they’ve still lost $370 since they met me.

Maybe I’m just one small cog in a gigantic machine. Maybe if you add up all the donors these organizations have, so much flows into the coffers that they can afford me. Indeed, maybe they expect a large amount of me’s on the off-chance this me might have millions and millions in the bank and an itchy trigger finger for write-offs at tax-time. And assuming there are a dozen groups sending me stuff, when you divide those losses by twelve, it really doesn’t amount to much per group.

But it still bugs me, every day at 12:30, when I hear the mailbox clanking closed after my postal worker’s daily visit.