I still get tons of political calls, texts, and emails from donations I made around 2016 and 2020. Is there any organization I can use to donate money that won’t harass me in the future or sell my data to someone else who will?
(I got a text soliciting a political donation while I was typing this question!)
Electronic Frontier Foundation, maybe.
Why would you want to donate to a political organization? I don’t get it. If you don’t know of a political organization already that you want to support, why go out to find one?
Your donation could go to a different / better cause than a political party.
I left out specifics because I didn’t want this thread to become a political debates, but I want to support the people running against fascists, because the fascists will do a hell of a lot worse than sell my contact information. I’d just much rather do it without getting harassed.
ACLU seems to be pretty good about not calling. They may send occasional mail, though.
I think they all share lists. I supported Bernie in 2016 and I’m getting a ton of Biden/Kamala text messages (all blocked and sent to spam). That was the only time I actually directly donated and put in my real phone number (instead of my throw away numbers).
Also, I’d be amazed if they didn’t have a way to get contact information from non-political sources. Like, off the top of my head - if I’m running a Dem campaign I’d be talking to every car dealership I could and seeing if I can buy their list of people who signed up for updates on EV availability to see if I can turn some of those people to donors, and I’m pretty certain there’s no laws or regulations that would stop them from doing that.
They all add donors to lists and send them solicitations based on the premise that a former donor doesn’t need as much convincing for their cause. It’s fairly easy to unsubscribe as soon as you get the first message, but by then your email may have already entered a partnership pool, so you’ll start getting similar solicitations.
Best way around it is to use an email anonymizing service, or one way phone/text numbers. Or you can treat it like a game and donate under username+charity@mailservice.com, then watch how many more messages you get to that specific address.
To answer your main question, eff.org and msf.org are pretty good charities. You can also check https://www.charitynavigator.org/.
If it’s purely political orgs, local groups are less likely to have aggressive fundraising arms.
