I still get tons of political calls, texts, and emails from donations I made around 2016 and 2020. Is there any organization I can use to donate money that won’t harass me in the future or sell my data to someone else who will?
(I got a text soliciting a political donation while I was typing this question!)
ACLU seems to be pretty good about not calling. They may send occasional mail, though.
They all add donors to lists and send them solicitations based on the premise that a former donor doesn’t need as much convincing for their cause. It’s fairly easy to unsubscribe as soon as you get the first message, but by then your email may have already entered a partnership pool, so you’ll start getting similar solicitations.
Best way around it is to use an email anonymizing service, or one way phone/text numbers. Or you can treat it like a game and donate under username+charity@mailservice.com, then watch how many more messages you get to that specific address.
To answer your main question, eff.org and msf.org are pretty good charities. You can also check https://www.charitynavigator.org/.
If it’s purely political orgs, local groups are less likely to have aggressive fundraising arms.
local groups are less likely to have aggressive fundraising arms
And more likely to need your donation!
I think they all share lists. I supported Bernie in 2016 and I’m getting a ton of Biden/Kamala text messages (all blocked and sent to spam). That was the only time I actually directly donated and put in my real phone number (instead of my throw away numbers).
PSL maybe?
It’s tricky. If they aren’t bothering donors like you for more, they’re leaving money on the table, and so probably aren’t very good at being a nonprofit in other ways as well.
Maybe just ask to be on the no-call list, and similar?
It is a somewhat specific ‘special interest’, but if you have an interest in pro-choice democratic women running for office, then maybe emilyslist.org. The name stands for, “Early Money Is Like Yeast”. They look for women who might not be in politics to get them to run in state elections – not just federal.