Donation Question
Dawn
If I make a donation to a non-profit charity using a credit card, does
the charity pay the credit card fees?
Dawn, who so far just writes checks.
Rod Speed
> If I make a donation to a non-profit charity using a
> credit card, does the charity pay the credit card fees?
Yes, but there is nothing to stop you increasing the donation to allow for that.
> Dawn, who so far just writes checks.
Dinosaur stuff.
Dawn
Thanks Rod. I don't know why I didn't think of that.
Dawn, happy being a dinosaur. :P
George
Absolutely, thats why the CC companies do all of the marketing because
they want to insert themselves into every financial transaction.
What I do for charitable contributions is buy those $0.39 money orders
and scribble my name on them. The charity gets the full value and there
is no possibly my name will end up on some solicitation list because
they don't know who I am.
hara...@lycos.com
even if you send a check or money order, there are fees associated
with processing those. So do what you like, the charity is just happy
to get your money.
i used a rewards CC and got a nice bonus for myself as well.
The Real Bev
> Hello to the group,
> If I make a donation to a non-profit charity using a credit card, does
> the charity pay the credit card fees?
What credit card fees? Do you mean interest on your contributions?
You'd borrow money to contribute? What am I missing?
> Dawn, who so far just writes checks.
My mom wrote checks at Christmas. During the rest of the year she was
constantly railing at the recipients to stop wasting her money by
sending her more begging letters. Since I had her mail forwarded to my
address, the post office thoughtfully told all those goddam beggars of
her new address so now WE get begging letters in her name at our address.
Screw 'em.
The downside is more paper for the landfill or recyclers; the upside is
that some of the charities are stupid enough to enclose stamped
envelopes for the supposed contribution. Since I pay most of my bills
on line, a pair of scissors and a glue stick work just fine to re-use
those stamps.
The absolutely most offensive begging letter I've seen so far has SECOND
NOTICE printed on the outside.
--
Cheers,
Bev
_|-_|-_|-_|-_|-_|-_|-_|-_|-_|-_|-_|-_
Too many freaks, not enough circuses.
Dawn
<bashley1...@gmail.com> wrote:
>Dawn wrote:
>
>> Hello to the group,
>> If I make a donation to a non-profit charity using a credit card, does
>> the charity pay the credit card fees?
>
>What credit card fees? Do you mean interest on your contributions?
>You'd borrow money to contribute? What am I missing?
>
The fees that the merchant (or in this case charity) pays to the
credit card companies to do business with them.
Dawn, who understands about the extra mail.
Joe
> the upside is that some of the charities are stupid enough to enclose
> stamped envelopes for the supposed contribution. Since I pay most of my
> bills on line, a pair of scissors and a glue stick work just fine to
> re-use those stamps.
Just cover up the "to" and "return" address. Believe it or not, cutting a
pre-stuck stamp off and re-gluing it is a federal offense for some reason.
It's a law put in place to cover the post office when they forget to cancel
a stamp... The postmaster has the right to refuse a letter with a
non-standard glue holding the stamp on.
Same goes for scotch tape.
> The absolutely most offensive begging letter I've seen so far has SECOND
> NOTICE printed on the outside.
Wow. That is nerve... I work for a charity as a volunteer and have for
over 20 years. Even a single follow-up letter would be inconsistent with
what I think is appropriate.
--
Joe in Northern, NJ - V#8013-R
Currently Riding The "Mother Ship"
http://yunx.com/valk.htm
Ride a motorcycle in or near NJ?
http://tinyurl.com/5apkg
John Weiss
>>> If I make a donation to a non-profit charity using a credit card, does
>>> the charity pay the credit card fees?
>>
>>What credit card fees? Do you mean interest on your contributions?
>>You'd borrow money to contribute? What am I missing?
>
> The fees that the merchant (or in this case charity) pays to the
> credit card companies to do business with them.
> Dawn, who understands about the extra mail.
Charities who solicit donations and professional solicitors hired by charities
all have legitimate administrative costs. Whether they are credit card fees or
hiring someone to take checks to the bank, they should remain outside the
consideration of the donor.
I get solicitations all the time where the solicitors tell me I would 'save them
administrative costs' by donating NOW by credit card instead of sending a check
later. Somehow I doubt it... I suspect it's more a 'bird in the hand'
situation...
Don't forget to ask the solicitor if [s]he is paid or volunteer, working for the
organization or a contractor. If it is not a volunteer working directly for the
soliciting organization,
1) You need not worry about who pays the credit card fees
2) You may want to reconsider your donation.
The state of WA maintains a comprehensive charities database with
cross-references to commercial solicitation contractors. Even if you don't live
it WA, it may be worth a look: http://www.secstate.wa.gov/charities/
The Real Bev
> <bashley1...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>Dawn wrote:
>>
>>> Hello to the group,
>>> If I make a donation to a non-profit charity using a credit card, does
>>> the charity pay the credit card fees?
>>
>>What credit card fees? Do you mean interest on your contributions?
>>You'd borrow money to contribute? What am I missing?
>
> The fees that the merchant (or in this case charity) pays to the
> credit card companies to do business with them.
Duh!
> Dawn, who understands about the extra mail.
I guess that's the price you pay for the tax deduction :-(
--
Cheers, Bev
===================================================================
"You know that I could go on the Internet right now under my
alternate screen name, "CherryXXX69," and get complete strangers to
email me a picture of their scrotum. I tell you, this country gave
the finger to privacy a long time ago." -- Bill Maher
The Real Bev
> CLIP
>> the upside is that some of the charities are stupid enough to enclose
>> stamped envelopes for the supposed contribution. Since I pay most of my
>> bills on line, a pair of scissors and a glue stick work just fine to
>> re-use those stamps.
>
> Just cover up the "to" and "return" address. Believe it or not, cutting a
> pre-stuck stamp off and re-gluing it is a federal offense for some reason.
> It's a law put in place to cover the post office when they forget to cancel
> a stamp... The postmaster has the right to refuse a letter with a
> non-standard glue holding the stamp on.
>
> Same goes for scotch tape.
Not quite. I got into a screaming match with the post office people
about this and didn't really think it was worth a gallon of gas to go to
the BIG post office to get the Postmaster to honor the 41 cents worth of
postage that was GLUED on. The absolute dumbest thing about the
situation was that the substation manager claimed that I'd taped the
stamps on. Any idiot could easily see that there was no tape.
I did phone (or email, I can't remember now) the Big Postmaster and
ultimately the sub-manager called me back with an apology. Asshole.
You can glue stamps on, but not tape them. Theory is that if you tape
them you can wipe the cancellation off the tape and re-use the stamps.
They looked up the regulation that allows re-use, and it said nothing
about the type of glue used.
I suspect that if they're going to quibble about the glue that they
should then replace those stamps with usable ones.
>> The absolutely most offensive begging letter I've seen so far has SECOND
>> NOTICE printed on the outside.
>
> Wow. That is nerve... I work for a charity as a volunteer and have for
> over 20 years. Even a single follow-up letter would be inconsistent with
> what I think is appropriate.
All the letters come from big-name charities that even I have heard of.
At least one per charity per month. Glossy paper. Her name and
address printed in several places, requiring me to rip them up by hand
so I can recycle the rest of the crap. Not only do they waste my mom's
money, they waste the trees and other resources that go into the
overly-elaborate mailings.
Oh yeah. They sold her name to charities she didn't contribute to EVER,
which continued to send the monthly letters.
Repeat: screw 'em all. If they want money, let 'em stand on street
corners ringing bells.
Joe
>> a pre-stuck stamp off and re-gluing it is a federal offense for some
>> reason. It's a law put in place to cover the post office when they forget
>> to cancel a stamp... The postmaster has the right to refuse a letter
>> with a non-standard glue holding the stamp on.
>>
>> Same goes for scotch tape.
>
> Not quite. I got into a screaming match with the post office people about
> this and didn't really think it was worth a gallon of gas to go to the BIG
> post office to get the Postmaster to honor the 41 cents worth of postage
> that was GLUED on. The absolute dumbest thing about the situation was
> that the substation manager claimed that I'd taped the stamps on. Any
> idiot could easily see that there was no tape.
>
> I did phone (or email, I can't remember now) the Big Postmaster and
> ultimately the sub-manager called me back with an apology. Asshole.
>
> You can glue stamps on, but not tape them. Theory is that if you tape
> them you can wipe the cancellation off the tape and re-use the stamps.
> They looked up the regulation that allows re-use, and it said nothing
> about the type of glue used.
>
> I suspect that if they're going to quibble about the glue that they should
> then replace those stamps with usable ones.
Funny. Our local guy and local postmaster dude also bounced back a few...
I simply figured it wasn't worth the hassle... So I proceeded to soak them
in warm water, laid them out to dry and glue sticked them to the next letter
so they couldn't tell. Not frugal use of my time, but I felt better.
Plus I had about $1,000 worth of stamps at the time. Worked for a huge
company that got lots of bulk mail from people complaining on postcards
printed by some religious organization. I scanned all the postcards and
took the ones with non-cancelled stamps home. Only the corners of course...
:)
I *think* what I did was a federal offense, but this story is theoretical,
right? :):)
> All the letters come from big-name charities that even I have heard of. At
> least one per charity per month. Glossy paper. Her name and address
> printed in several places, requiring me to rip them up by hand so I can
> recycle the rest of the crap. Not only do they waste my mom's money, they
> waste the trees and other resources that go into the overly-elaborate
> mailings.
>
> Oh yeah. They sold her name to charities she didn't contribute to EVER,
> which continued to send the monthly letters.
>
> Repeat: screw 'em all. If they want money, let 'em stand on street
> corners ringing bells.
I'm *so* glad I'm part of a group that has some sense of a conscience. We
go so far as to ask members permission to send them mail depending on the
mail-type.
You should collect them all and send them back to the charity UPS collect.
Melinda Meahan - take out TRASH to reply
> sending her more begging letters. Since I had her mail forwarded to my
> address, the post office thoughtfully told all those goddam beggars of
> her new address so now WE get begging letters in her name at our address.
My sister got all the ones from my mom stopped by writing DECEASED on
the envelope and returning it to the charity.
--
Every job is a self-portrait of the person who does it. Autograph your
work with excellence.
Logan Shaw
> What I do for charitable contributions is buy those $0.39 money orders
> and scribble my name on them. The charity gets the full value and there
> is no possibly my name will end up on some solicitation list because
> they don't know who I am.
That is the smartest idea I've seen in this newsgroup in months.
I just got a year-end call from a charity that I gave money to a few times
before, and although previously they were really polite and non-pushy when
they called asking for more money, this time the particular person who
called me was pushy as all get out. I basically told the guy "no" 4 times
before he finally gave up, which is 3 times more than I'd have preferred.
- Logan
Logan Shaw
> I asked this same question to my favorite charity and was told that
> even if you send a check or money order, there are fees associated
> with processing those. So do what you like, the charity is just happy
> to get your money.
That's a good point. If you mail them a check in an envelope, they have
to pay employees to open those envelopes (unless they get volunteers to
do it), and that costs money. Meanwhile if you go to their web site and
make a donation using a credit card, there is very little labor involved
in processing that. Processing a credit card transaction costs a few
percentage points, but if the amount is relatively small, that might be
less than the overhead of dealing with a paper check.
Sort of on the same subject, if you own stock that you're going to sell
anyway, sometimes it can be a good plan to donate the stock to a charity
instead of selling it. The charity doesn't pay taxes on it because they're
a charity, and you avoid capital gains tax on it because you never realized
a capital gain (because you never sold it). And it's still deductible if
you itemize and deduct charitable contributions. Also, from what I
understand, you can go out and purchase the same number of shares that you
donated, and you still get the tax benefit!
- Logan
Evelyn C. Leeper
Why don't people just take the envelope, put a large address label over
the charity's address, and write the new address on that?
--
Evelyn C. Leeper
I believe I found the missing link between animal
and civilized man. It is us. -Konrad Lorenz
Evelyn C. Leeper
When our university's annual fund got too pushy (by insisting we had
promised to give a certain amount over the phone and we had not), we
wrote them that we were not giving *anything* that year because of this.
We said we would resume the next year but wanted no more phone calls.
We haven't gotten any since. (And we do contribute every year.)
George
CC. Typically organizations of any size use lockbox processing for
checks. They never even see the envelope you sent and the processing is
handled for a very small fee.
Jerry Boswell
news:AsWdnfNLDOOSBBza...@comcast.com...
> Charities who solicit donations and professional solicitors hired by
> charities all have legitimate administrative costs. Whether they are
> credit card fees or hiring someone to take checks to the bank, they should
> remain outside the consideration of the donor.
Thanks for your common-sense comments; all this hand-wringing about credit
card costs seems a bit much. If the charity decides to accept credit card
donations, they've obviously decided that they're coming out money ahead by
doing so despite the cost involved.
Jerry Boswell
news:y4ednRiHcZKAvRza...@comcast.com...
No, but they also can't provide you with proof that you've donated the
amount you claim if you itemize and if you're ever audited.
Rod Speed
> John Weiss <jrweiss98...@NOSPAM.comcast.net> wrote
>> Charities who solicit donations and professional solicitors hired by
>> charities all have legitimate administrative costs. Whether they are
>> credit card fees or hiring someone to take checks to the bank, they
>> should remain outside the consideration of the donor.
> Thanks for your common-sense comments; all this hand-wringing about credit card costs seems a bit much.
Your lies about hand wringing in spades. ALL the OP was
asking about was what delivers the most cash to the charity.
> If the charity decides to accept credit card donations, they've obviously decided that they're coming out money ahead
> by doing so despite the cost involved.
But that also involves the difference between getting the money
for sure by getting the card details from the individual and the
risk that they wont get around to posting a check etc too.
Logan Shaw
> Why don't people just take the envelope, put a large address label over
> the charity's address, and write the new address on that?
That's exactly what I've done on at least one occasion. The self-addressed
stamped envelope wasn't from a charity, I don't think, but it was the same
idea either way.
- Logan
The Real Bev
> Joe wrote:
>> Bev wrote:
>>> I suspect that if they're going to quibble about the glue that they should
>>> then replace those stamps with usable ones.
>>
>> Funny. Our local guy and local postmaster dude also bounced back a few...
>> I simply figured it wasn't worth the hassle... So I proceeded to soak them
>> in warm water, laid them out to dry and glue sticked them to the next letter
>> so they couldn't tell. Not frugal use of my time, but I felt better.
>
> Why don't people just take the envelope, put a large address label over
> the charity's address, and write the new address on that?
Some of them have barcodes printed on the bottom, and the envelopes are
generally too small. Besides, then you have to buy the address labels.
Some of the charity stamps are the 'forever' first class stamps. I'm
hanging onto those! I may never have to buy stamps again.
--
Cheers,
Bev
------------------------------------------------------
"Give me all your brains or I'll blow your money out!"
--Anonymous Unsuccessful Bank Robber
The Real Bev
> "George" <geo...@nospam.invalid> wrote:
>> Dawn wrote:
>>>
>>> If I make a donation to a non-profit charity using a credit card, does
>>> the charity pay the credit card fees? Dawn, who so far just writes
>>> checks.
>>
>> Absolutely, thats why the CC companies do all of the marketing because
>> they want to insert themselves into every financial transaction.
>>
>> What I do for charitable contributions is buy those $0.39 money orders and
>> scribble my name on them. The charity gets the full value and there is no
>> possibly my name will end up on some solicitation list because they don't
>> know who I am.
>
> No, but they also can't provide you with proof that you've donated the
> amount you claim if you itemize and if you're ever audited.
Xerox it, along with the stamped envelope, before you mail it. I'd bet
money that if you're ever audited they'll accept that, and what are the
odds of being audited anyway?
A friend regards his 1040 as his opening bid.
Evelyn C. Leeper
> Evelyn C. Leeper wrote:
>> Joe wrote:
>>> Bev wrote:
>>>> I suspect that if they're going to quibble about the glue that they
>>>> should then replace those stamps with usable ones.
>>>
>>> Funny. Our local guy and local postmaster dude also bounced back a
>>> few... I simply figured it wasn't worth the hassle... So I proceeded
>>> to soak them in warm water, laid them out to dry and glue sticked
>>> them to the next letter so they couldn't tell. Not frugal use of my
>>> time, but I felt better.
>>
>> Why don't people just take the envelope, put a large address label
>> over the charity's address, and write the new address on that?
>
> Some of them have barcodes printed on the bottom, and the envelopes are
> generally too small. Besides, then you have to buy the address labels.
White-Out over the bar codes works fine (or wide black marker pen).
And I suspect an envelope costs more than a label (though I haven't
checked). I use plain white labels that I also use for labeling boxes, etc.
The Real Bev
I bought a box of 1000 business envelopes for a buck at a yard sale
several years ago. No matter how many I use, the box is still full :-)
--
Cheers, Bev
================================================================
"Is there any way I can help without actually getting involved?"
-- Jennifer, WKRP