I am trying to simplify my life and my financial life, and am making good progress, partly because I am well organized and hate stuff. A few financial areas are defeating me, however.
This one may be off topic; if so, please just say so.
I donate to 20 or so charities whose work I am familiar with and admire. I give to each twice a year, which means 40 checks to write, track, and keep copies of and 40 letters of acknowledgment to watch for, record and save, to support this one item on my IRS return. It is time-consuming, and Boring to the Point of Physical Pain (bttpopp).
Moreover, many of the charities
Send me "free gifts" (all of which I find useless crap)
Send me appeals repeatedly during the year
Send me information repeatedly during the year
This deluge of material is also bttpopp, even though it all goes straight into the recycle.
Not all my charities do all of the above, and some have complied with my requests to send me nothing but acknowledgments and an annual report. I have stopped giving to the most intransigent offenders, but still the mail, and the free gift crap comes and comes and comes.
This consequence of generosity may sound so trivial that it isn't worth worrying about, but it is a Chinese Water Torture thing. Drip, drip, drip, scream.
I can't imagine they would do things I have repeatedly told them I hate if I were a big, big donor, but my contributions are all in the low four figures per year.
How do I get them to stop without devoting my life to the campaign? **Will donating through something like the Vanguard Philanthropic Center be
- less time consuming
- spare me the deluge of mail? and possibly
- stop getting me on mailing lists of related charities to whom I have never sent and never will send, anything?