Charities Deceive Donors Unaware Money Goes to a Telemarketer

[mchammer187]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-...ors-unaware-money-goes-to-a-telemarketer.html

Carol Patterson was waiting for a call from her doctor. When the phone rang on that afternoon in August 2011 at her home in Cortland, Ohio, it wasn’t a physician on the other end. A woman named Robin said she was representing the American Diabetes Association.

Robin didn’t ask for money. She asked Patterson to stamp and mail pre-printed fundraising letters to 15 neighbors. Both of Patterson’s parents and one grandmother had been diabetic, so she agreed to do it, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its October issue.

“I thought since it does run in the family, it wouldn’t hurt for me to help,” says Patterson, 64, a retired elementary school teacher. She guessed, based on what she knew about charity fundraising, that about 70 to 80 percent of the money she brought in would be used for diabetes research.

The truth was almost the exact opposite. The vast majority of funds Patterson, her neighbors and people like them throughout the country would raise -- almost 80 percent -- would never be made available to the Diabetes Association. Instead, that money collected from letters sent to neighbors would go to the company that employed Robin and an army of other paid telephone solicitors: InfoCision Management Corp.

Pretty despicable and the largest settlement against them was 75,000 when then have taken in millions.

Moral of the story never donate through a telemarketer.

 

[shortylickens]

I only donate to stuff in the CFC. And normally through the CFC. They dont give away your info.

 

[Thump553]

Neat trick having you volunteer to get leads for them. Makes it sound like a legit charity.

I heard this story earlier tonight on NPR. The really disgusting thing is they will flat out lie to you how much money is being retained by the paid solicitors. That lie is right in the script, and the script is expressly approved by the charity involved.

I hang up on every telephone solicitation I get unless it is for a local charity (ie, town ambulance association, etc) and the person identifies themselves as a volunteer for that organization.