So, probably about nine months to a year ago we get a knock at the door and I answer it to a man stood there with a clipboard. All I can really remember about him was how confident he was stood on our doorstep trying his hardest to get us to give a donation to a well known charity organisation. He did everything to convince us and in the end we said we'd donate online just because you can never be too sure who is actually stood on your doorstep. Not that for one second we thought he had come for any other reason than to raise money for the well known charity organisation but it's just a bit safer if you go to them to donate as opposed to the other way round. So we put in a donation and it asks for home address etc for any further correspondence from the well known charity organisation which we were happy to supply. Well putting down our address for correspondence was just the start of it.
For the last nine months to a year roughly once a month we have received a letter from them and in every single one of them they have given us at least one free gift per letter. These gifts range from pens to personalised return address stickers to greetings cards to stickers to badges to seeds for the garden...I think the only thing they've forgotten to send us is the kitchen sink. I can see why they are doing it to an extent; they are trying to raise awareness of themselves and get other people to donate to them as well but surely their money would be better spent elsewhere. I know they will have a marketing budget and I'm sure they won't be using any of the money donated for advertising and marketing but surely if they sent half as many free gifts they would be able to spend more money where it was really needed. I'm sure it doesn't cost much to say chuck in a free sheet of personalised address labels lets say 10p a sheet? But they've sent about five to us now so that's 50p to us and if they're sending these letters out to everyone who's ever donated to them...don't forget we've only donated the once and I'd have thought they have at least two hundred thousand people who have ever donated to them so if you work it out the numbers start to add up. And that's just on the personalised address labels, let's not forget everything else they've sent out...Like I said I'm happy for them to try and promote themselves but there has to be a point where you think wouldn't this money be better spent elsewhere? It might be working very well for them and if their promoting brings in lots of extra charity money then great but from personal experience it hasn't brought them anything extra by sending the free gifts here. That might just be that we are heartless people and we're not proactive enough to take advantage of the free gifts and use them to spread the word of this well known charity organisation...maybe sending the free gifts is saving the cost of paying people to go door to door to try and persuade others to donate? I don't know but what I do know is that the free gifts haven't done anything to persuade me to donate again...if anything it's put me off donating to them again because it just puts a slight doubt in the mind as to where the money actually goes.
I'm sure the donations do go where they are supposed to and I have no doubts over the work and effort put in by this organisation but I think they have gone slightly over the top with the amount of freebies they send through. Just think of the amount they could save if they sent an email instead of a letter...but then would anyone pay attention to an email...perhaps about as much attention to what they pay to a letter...
