By Stuart Morrell/Special to The Apopka Voice
If your household is anything like mine, you are constantly getting phone calls from various “charities” asking for donations to help. And the timing is usually during the dinner hour! Having spent 20 years working in the non-profit world, I will go out on a limb and say that the clear majority of these callers are scams.
Many of these calls are seeking support for police and firefighter widows, kids, etc.
Every day, our police and firefighters risk their lives to make our community safer. To show your support, you may consider making a donation when a fund-raiser calls from a fire or police service organization. But before you write the check, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) urges you to consider these facts:
Want to know where your public safety contributions might be headed? Taking the following precautions can help ensure that your donation dollars will benefit the people, organization, or community you actually want to help.
I find that the biggest question to ask is “What percentage of my contribution will go to the charity/cause?” The answer you get is most telling. If it’s a legitimate charity, they should be telling you that more than 50% of your contribution will go towards the charity/cause. What I find is that one of three things will usually happen on a scam call:
If only 10% is going to the charity or cause, where is the rest going? Right into the pockets of these likely scam artists! Wouldn’t it be better to call the charity or cause and ask how you can support them directly so that they would receive 100% of your support?
The National Consumers League’s National Fraud Information Center offers this additional advice: beware of organizations with names that are similar to legitimate groups. And be suspicious of callers who offer to come to your home to pick up your contribution—legitimate charities don’t do that.
Remember, you can always hang up and call the organization directly. That way, you know every penny is going to your local firefighters or police, not to the guy who interrupted your dinner.
(Thanks to the Federal Trade Commission and AARP for some of this background information)
Stuart Morrell spent 20 years as a Fund Raising and Agency Executive in the non-profit world and worked with organizations such as the American Heart Association, American Diabetes Association, Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and the United Way.
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