Not a transport post. Standby for the Brisbane busways post coming soon…
It’s the end of the financial year – when charities get in touch asking for donations.
Having recently been bombarded with letters, I looked at my finances and realised I’m lucky enough that I can afford make a some extra donations.
But something I’ve noticed is that some charities demand your phone number when you donate. This is not something I want to give them. The only reason they could use this is to ring me up.
I’ve already got charities from previous donartions ringing me up out of the blue. I absolutely do not want more of them doing that.
I’d also prefer they didn’t send me lots of paper letters, but at least those won’t interrupt me in the middle of a meal or while I’m busy at work.
Yes I could probably use a known fictional phone number, but why should I have to? Why don’t charities respect the privacy of their donors?
So my ideal criteria for donations is:
- a charity doing good work
- tax deductible in Australia, so I can give more
- online donation, so it’s easy
- not required to enter a phone number
- ideally they also have an option of Paypal payment, so I don’t even need to give them my credit card – but that’s not a deal-breaker
So here’s what I found for the charities I checked:
- The Smith Family – yes, all good – donated
- ASRC (Asylum Seeker Resource Centre) – wants phone number. Sorry, but no.
- Save The Children – wants phone number. Sorry.
- Melbourne City Mission – wants phone number. Sorry.
- Lifeline – wants phone number. Sorry.
- Red Cross – wants phone number. Sorry.
- BeyondBlue – web site is broken – doesn’t work in Firefox. But if you can work around that, they don’t want your phone number. Donated.
- Medecins Sans Frontier – global web site redirect to Australian donation site is broken – doesn’t work in Firefox. Once you find the right place, they want your phone number. Sorry.
- UNICEF Australia – wants phone number. Sorry.
- Oxfam – doesn’t need phone number, but does want address. I can live with that (especially as I already donate to them). Donated (again)
- World Vision – wants phone number. Sorry.
- VACCA (Victorian Aboriginal Child Care Agency) – all good. Donated.
- McGrath Foundation – doesn’t want phone number. Donated.
- Foodbank – doesn’t need phone number. Donated.
… This backfired. They already had my number somewhere, and rang me up to thank me.😐 - White Ribbon – doesn’t need a phone number, but I can’t get their web site to work. It keeps saying “Required Field” but all the contact fields are filled. I think it doesn’t like PO boxes, even though their auto fill recognises it.
- CARE Australia – doesn’t need a phone number. Donated.
(Some of these I’ve donated to previously, and they already have my phone number, but included above for completeness.)
Okay maybe I’m lucky that at least some of them met my criteria. Thankfully some are in similar fields to others who don’t.
What are some other good charities?
Am I being too picky?
I can’t be the only person thinking like this. Maybe if they stopped insisting on wanting phone numbers and other details, a few more people might donate?
Update: some other charities:
- Australian NV Access creates the free NVDA screen reader for the visually impaired, and is a registered charity (via Quentin; nothing to do with giant graphics card company NVidia, which has the stock code NVDA)
- The Better Buses campaign is part of Sustainable Cities, a joint venture from Friends Of The Earth Melbourne and PTUA.
12 replies on “Charities want my phone number”
Unfortunately pestering people works. Same reason business websites annoy us with pop-ups and creepy emails. But many charities are pretty conscientious in how they manage their donor lists – there is a good chance that, even if they are asking for your phone number, you could request no phone calls and they will have the infrastructure in place to make sure this is possible.
This has bugged me for years. In part it’s probably just that their third party CRM systems want phone numbers by default, or assume anyone who wants to support them ought to be happy giving them a phone number. But I fear there’s also an element of passive aggression operating here, where the charities have figured people are so blasé about giving up personal information now that they feel they can afford to lose a few old grumpies like us in return for having more phone numbers they can work for more donations in future.
This is the reason that I course my donations through my employer which has the added benefit of doubling and sometimes tripling the amount with my employer at the very least matching every $ donated by employees. I once donated online on a charities’ website with a note to not send me any communication (phone, email, post) but I still receive letters 2x a year :-(
One other thing to be mindful of is setting up donations via street side/shoping centre set ups. Found out buried deep in the fine print AFTER you’ve signed up that for CANTEEN 82% of the donations from your first year go toward paying the wages of those who signed you up, rather than directly to the charity’s cause.
I’ll be cancelling mine and redirecting to a charity I can donate to online, with hopefully a better dollar to actual cause ratio. Google Gemini suggests that on average 55% of donations are largely directed toward employee costs, so if you are donating somewhere with a lower percentage than that you are probably doing a bit better.
Have you thought about donating to The Royal Melbourne Hospital Foundation? Supporting Victoria’s first public hospital, the RMH Foundation raises funds to ensure excellent healthcare is accessible to everyone in our community.
No phone number is required, and PayPal is supported: https://donations.thermh.org.au/tax2025/appeal
I am not keen on donating to causes where it seems money is needed to cover for what should be a general societal responsibility through taxes via our governments, which I am quite happy to pay if the money is well spent. I would not give my phone number. Harassment by Cabrini Hospital by mail for donations and the bombardment from Change.org is quite enough. My brother owed me money and I told him to donate it to the Lost Dogs Home. He had a look online, not being very digital savvy, and said **** it. I will go to the home and donate in cash, which he did.
In the past I’ve donated to The Heart Foundation and Vision Australia (my family is full of heart and vision issues) and both rang me every couple of months, even after asking them not to. One of them even sent Christmas cards for me to buy and then send out – not quite sure how that campaign ended up as I didn’t send any other money and sent the cards anyhow (the suggested donation for the 5 cards was outrageous). Currently with RSPCA and although I don’t get calls, I do get paper mail every couple of months. Will be changing to RFDS next month (who don’t require a phone number).
I’ve been regularly donating to the Asylum Seekers Resource Centre for 6 years as they do some much needed work.
Despite having my phone number, I have never been called and maybe once or twice a year I might receive a text regarding a fundraising campaign. Occasionally I get an email which I ignore as I’m already a donor.
I think they get the balance right between asking for donations and not pestering people.
YES! THIS! It is a painful new habit they’re all getting into so that they can provide that number to the external organisation they use for “relationship management” — a usually one-way relationship of phoning you up every six weeks to seek more. I donate judiciously and thoughtfully, so they’re wasting their time, but it burdens my mind to have to worry about to whom else – intentionally or unintentionally – that information is going to. How strong, really, are their data firewalls? How many third parties are they providing it to and how strong are THEIR data firewalls. Welcome to the new age when we love hoovering up data, but don’t love spending money on protecting it … I have an easy solution: DON’T COLLECT IT IN THE FIRST PLACE!! Or at least don’t store it except for tax purposes.
I’ve started resorting to just hanging up the call. It seems callous, however when you realise the person calling you is working for a third party firm it doesn’t bother me at all.
I’m also in a position where I have big expenses coming up, so I need every cent I have. Why waste their time listening to the spiel when they could be bothering someone with looser purse strings?
FWIW Beyond Blue’s web site works fine on my Firefox (139.0.4 64-bit on WIndows 10).
Severely annoyed by the otherwise worthy ASRC who insist on wasting our money by sending letters out and ignoring the fact that we return them with a big message on the front saying “stop sending us letters”. Perhaps this is simply what they resort to when they don’t have people’s phone numbers? Better maybe to let them waste less money by giving them your phone number and blocking them?
@Joe, thanks – maybe BB fixed their web site.
Blocking numbers doesn’t work for some charities – they seem to use a range of different numbers, possibly when they are phone banking – eg getting their volunteers to ring from a bunch of mobiles phones.