Charity Evolution

Posted on | March 30, 2008 at 7:16 pm | 1 Comment

Yesterday when I was doing my grocery shopping at Safeway, they introduced a new wrinkle into the “hitting you up at the cash register for charity” game. And I have to say, this is quite clever. Instead of asking you “Would you like to donate a dollar to Easter Seals?”, they now say “Would you like to make the total an even number of dollars and donate the change to Easter Seals?”. So, if for example your total is $23.13, they ask if you want to donate 82 cents to Easter Seals and make the total grocery bill an even $24. This works for cash, check and credit.

I believe I’ve written before about how I don’t like getting hit up for charity as I’m checking out of a store and that I prefer to choose my own charities and donate to them privately, but I can’t find that blog entry. Maybe it was in some comments. Anyway, I feel there’s too much pressure there to contribute and that the object is to make you feel shame in front of the clerk and the other customers if you don’t, which just makes me not want to do it all the more. Nevertheless, I did actually donate my change yesterday, and it looked like most other customers were doing it as well. The donation even shows up on your receipt. So somebody really did some good research on that one. And I’m sure the donation money really piles up for Easter Seals if most customers are donating their change.

Latre.

P.S. If you feel like giving today, my friend Lorrie is doing the March of Babies Walk for March of Dimes on April 26th. And Sue has issued a DonorsChoose.org challenge.

Poignant Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “friends dont’ grope friends”.