I certainly don’t have anything against giving to charity, but the Salvation Army knows damn well what it’s doing. First, they position a red bucket about a foot outside the grocery store by my house — so close that you have to deliberately walk around it like an A-hole to get in or out of the store — and second, there’s a different person ringing the bell each day so the whole "I gave you something yesterday" excuse goes right out the window. So now it basically costs me whatever spare change is in my pocket to go to the grocery store now.
The last bastion of hope is the old "I don’t have any cash on me" line. Well, that’s fading fast for people in Dallas as the Star Telegram reports that the Salvation Army "will offer credit-card machines at about a dozen of its nearly 500 Metroplex locations for the first time this holiday season." It gets better, too, as the minimum credit card donation is $5 since the charity gets charged 25 cents, plus 2.9% of each transaction. Tossing your spare change in that bucket doesn’t seem so bad after all, huh?
[via Gear Diary]
My local church accepts recurring credit card charges for donations, go figure….
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I wouldn’t put my plastic near a homeless deadbeat in a Santa suit.
When you toss a dime into one of those kettles, 9 cents of it goes to help diaster survivors, battered women and children, and the homeless. That nine cents helps feed the hungry, makes Christmas possible for a lot of needy kids, and provides substance abuse counseling for those that need that, and a lot of other social service programs. The Salvation Army helps put people back on their feet who have been knocked down by life, and they do it without high paid executives like some other organizations. Instead, they do it with love, and purpose, and a resolve to make things better in this world. I can find no flaw in that effort, and the Salvation Army needs money to do it. The money comes from you, and you give it not because you care about the Salvation Army. You give it because you care about people who have no one else to turn to.