Saturday, September 10, 2011

In which I complain about getting free stuff

I unexpectedly got a big, thick envelope in the mail yesterday from St. Joseph's Indian School. I knew its contents were going to be odd based on this:
 

But despite its promise of 3 - no 4! - free gifts, I was still surprised by the sheer volume of crap contained in the envelope:

I've gotten guilt-mailings from charities before, but this is ridiculous. In case you can't make out what everything is, there are two notepads:


A personalized calendar, a sticker sheet, and a sheet of address stickers:

A preemptive "Certificate of Appreciation" for my help:


A personalized letter from an Authentic Indian Child, and personalized gift certificates for me to provide said child with food and clothing:

And last, but certainly not least, a real live dreamcatcher:

I can't think of anything that would make me less inclined to donate to a charity than them sending me all this crap in the mail. In addition to making me feel resentful for trying to guilt me into giving them money because of the reciprocal nature of gift-giving, it also casts serious doubt on what they would actually do with my money once they got it - send more dreamcatchers to more random people in the mail? How is that helping any Lakota children?

Some quick googling revealed that not only have they been doing this trick for awhile, but that St. Joseph's Indian School is actually pretty negatively reviewed by the BBB's Charity Reports Index - for, among other issues, only spending 51% of their money on their actual program. I guess the other 49% goes to dreamcatchers and postage.

4 comments:

  1. Sure, I'll save it from the trash for you!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Really, I pulled it out of the trash and put it on my desk, and I'll bring it home for Thanksgiving.

    ReplyDelete