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I was in 4 stores yesterday that asked me to donate for breast cancer, St. Judes, Injured Veterans, and Local Policeman injured by a criminal.

I bet today it will be flood victims and college shooting families. The phone rings at least twice a day with requests for donations. My email is full of requests and repeated requests from several candidates, Conservative groups, NRA causes, and even local candidates are now starting their 2016 fundraising programs. Tonight there will be requests and a 50/50 raffle at a meeting to provide weekend food for children.

I have had to give up attendance at Lincoln Day and Constitution Day Banquets for several years. $65 and $75 is just impossible. Conventions and Teaching Sessions held by many of our favorite groups are also out of the question.

I am afraid that my, and others, charitable spirit is being greatly stretched at this time. I am getting hardened to requests and learning to say NO, THANK YOU. I have to hang up before callers can launch into their written script.

Maybe other FReepers are feeling “protective” of their funds too. It will make the task harder and harder for you.

UGH. You are getting “it” much worse and much more often than poor me. My landline is listed in the telephone book and I’ll wager yours is too. I have learned to say, “Sorry, I am a very poor widow,” and I immediately hang up. I realize that I might be inviting danger by the widow info, but I can tell by the area codes that the calls originate out of my immediate area.

I like to choose my charities. I don’t appreciate telephone solicitations and I sometimes relate that fact to the more insistent or pushier callers....LOL.

Bryan and I have stopped all donations except Free Republic and two local area animal shelters.

We are familiar with the owners and operators of the shelters, so we trust them to use our donations legally, all in for the animals.

We get a lot of calls from beggars trying to get donations. But we NEVER give money or financial information to a phone caller.

Now that we are so inundated with begging bowl calls, we finally realized that we are on many “sucker lists.” If you donate to just
anyone, especially someone you don’t know, they take your money and immediately sell your name and phone number to another
begging bowl crook. We were astounded to find how many times our number was sold.

We have caller ID, and if they’re not in our address book, they get hung up on.