Charitable Exhortation

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

In what conceivable way is my charitable giving any of my employer’s business?  

 More annoying – they pick some charity they want to fund and hit up everybody to contribute.  I nominate the National Rifle Association.  No?  Why not?  Why does it have to be the United Way funneling money to Leftist causes?

 A “charitable contribution” is, by definition, a non-governmental activity for which my contribution is tax-deductible.  Why would a governmental entity be encouraging government employees to reduce the tax revenues from which we’re funded?

 Joe Doakes

It’s not like tax revenue ever really drops…

12 thoughts on “Charitable Exhortation

  1. Come on, JD!

    You know that we are too stupid to manage our own money, let alone say where we contribute it. Our overlords know better.

  2. When I clicked on the link I got the following:

    The link you are accessing has been blocked by Ramsey County, Minnesota. If you believe this is an error or need access to this link, please contact the website administrator.

  3. My company encourages us to give to charity, but they don’t require it, and we have a catalog of thousands of charities that we can choose from, with no preference of choice implied. I give to the Boy Scouts of America, Northern Star Council, and to Frasier Learning Center in St Paul (helps with special needs children). I did a quick search of our charities catalog for “gun” and the various pro-gun groups (lots and lots of “rod and gun” clubs) outweigh the various grabber groups about 2:1. GOCRA is listed in our catalog, so that’s encouraging. But then so is Brady Center and Every Town for Gunsense.

  4. My company had a strong “100%” push going on, and I thought about signing up for just $1 to make them happy, but did not, on principle. I was going to “dedicate” my funds to the Boy Scouts but found out that the way UW works is, if I dedicate my amount to the BSA, they just take it from somebody else and give it to the same stupid left-wing organization. That is, my dedicated funds do not increase the amount the BSA gets or decrease the amount anybody else gets. So I started donating directly to my favorite charity. Too bad we can’t do that with our taxes, and pick and choose.

  5. Yup, it’s United Way extortion time.

    My company sent deduction sheets around last week. I put mine in the trash, and told my boss I make my United Way donations to the Boy Scouts.

  6. Sorry about the busted link. It led to a page asking employees to suggest recipients for the Combined Charities drive, suggestions that will be narrowed down to select recipients, presumably by some committee of wise managers. We sign up to contribute, they decide who we contribute to. I can’t find a link to the current Ramsey County list, but for comparison purposes, here’s the link to the State of Minnesota list:

    https://mn.gov/mmb/combined-charities/charities/#/list/appId/1/filterType//filterValue//page/2/sort//order/

    Mind, I have nothing against employees making charitable contributions to worthy organizations. I don’t even care if employers offer payroll deduction to fund it. I object that it’s none of my employer’s business who I consider worthy. They hope to see 100% participation but if I decline to give money to leftists, I wreck the “feel-good” for everybody and stand out as a hater.

  7. Dittos on others. The United Way seems to be mostly a way of getting a little bit to worthy charities, but a lot to groups that are actively doing harm. No thank you, even with employer match.

    Thankfully, it’s been a while since my employers have done a United Way drive. Maybe people are catching on?

  8. JD tell them you tithe your church it usually shuts them up.

    UW of course has to get their beak wet – the $100 you pledge to the Boy Scouts has carrying costs so the Boy Scouts actually receive something less than $100.

    I had UW for a client briefly – it was like doing business with Don Fanucci

  9. I object that it’s none of my employer’s business who I consider worthy. They hope to see 100% participation but if I decline to give money to leftists, I wreck the “feel-good” for everybody and stand out as a hater.

    @Joe Doakes: Both my current and previous employers would count “participation” as everybody who sent the card back, even if they marked the “No donation” checkbox. Year in and out, my employer would tout the 90+% participation.

    Feel free to stand out as a “hater”, because most of the UW campaigns I’ve been witness to are all about emotional blackmail and promoting the herd mentality: People don’t want to look like the only stingy a-hole in the company, so they toss a couple of bucks to the would-be extortionists representing the UW. I’ve made more than one UW coordinator squirm when I ask if my employer hired me to test software or to “participate” in charity drives as well?

    I agree with you: What business is it of theirs?

    There’s a favorite quote of mine by Andre Gide that applies here: “It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.” These charity middlemen (By the way, how is it efficient to donate to a middleman rather than directly to the charities they disburse the money too?) won’t ever learn until they meet resistance that is not heartless, just not easily emotionally manipulated.

  10. I’ve always refused to donate to the UW for the usual reasons (I don’t like some of the causes they support, and they’re too inefficient in putting my money to use). It hasn’t made my bosses happy since they’re under pressure to herd folks to make corporate bragging points, but I’m adamant about avoiding them.

    And my bosses have some indication of how much I donate to my causes since in the past we had a nice, generous matching policy of up to $3K in the past (it’s gone down to $500 in the past few years). And, as I love to point out, a minimum of 95% of my donations go directly to charity operations, unlike the lousy efficiency of UW.

  11. I’ve been through the UW and other charity drills. They want to get all the employees together and give them a drill. Lends to a certain amount of pressure to the individual to do the “right thing” because others may chose or not to participate. Often they would bring a “celebrity’ to do the sales pitch, not that it’s a bad thing but certainly the opportunity for coercion is there.

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