Dear Second Amendment Foundation,

[sig2009]

+1

The insurance I could get from the NRA will insure 2 guns.

 

[milktree]

so, you tell her to mail you crap, then you complain that they mail you crap? WTF dude.

Wow, Do you really not see the difference between mailing DVDs and then asking for the recipient to pay for them, and a straightforward request of money?

It's like the difference between, "Hey Dad, can I have $10 to go to the movies? I've got popcorn money already." and "Hey Dad, I just bought you a tie, now you should give me $10."

The former is up-front and honest. The second is manipulative.

Furthermore, "crap" is stuff like belt buckles and commemorative magnets and DVDs and plaques, that stuff is (relatively) expensive to manufacture and ship, and can't even be recycled easily. It's not an envelope with a request for donations.

Not everyone is as on-top of their annual giving as you are, so need a reminder. I have no problem with a periodic request, so long as it's not disguised as something else.

 

[Bill Nance]

Please stop sending me stuff. I don't want a belt buckle. I don't want a plaque thanking me for my donation. I want you to spend the money I gave you paying court fees and lawyers and doing what you're really good at. That's why I give you money.

But most of all, don't send me "free" DVDs with a guilt letter that I should really give you $12.95 for it, and sign up for the rest of the series. You're not Publishers Clearing House, you're a professional organization dedicated to preserving and restoring our Second Amendment rights. Pick some [strike]less[/strike] non sleazy, more professional way of raising money. When you do stuff like that I feel like you think I'm a sucker, an idiot, or both.

I'm not sending your DVD back, and I'm not going to pay for it.

I'll give you money when you ask for money in a way that doesn't feel like a scam, and only as long as you continue to do the work you've dedicated yourself to do. Don't turn into a money raising organization like the NRA.

Thanks,

-Milktree

You are seriously ignorant of the way non-profits work. (And I mean that n the sense that you have lack of knowledge, not that you are somehow stupid).

A non-profit lives and dies on it's contributions. It has few, if any serious patrons, and a national organization like SAF has more expenses than any series of large contributors could meet.
And so, inevitably, they call on third-party marketers to make them money. What sells? Generally it's three things, which I will order in number of importance:
1. Sex
2. Fear
3. confirmation of personhood (manhood, political identity, etc.)

So the NPO hires a marketing company to make it some money. The Marketing company comes back and says: This campaign will cost $2 million. We will send out $2 million in crap "rewards" and we will receive $9 million in total donations. That means $9 million in contributions to the NGO and the marketing company (If the NGO isn't retarded) will get $1 million while the NGO gets $4 million.

For all that it may piss you off, SAF gets $4 million it didn't have out of the campaign.

Welcome to NPO marketing.

I agree it's annoying, but every single major NPO does this. It's the bread and butter of operational costs, which is very non-trivial and doesn't sound sexy at all. For every email like yours, they get $50 from some sap who wants the belt buckle to show all his friends that he is more pro-RKBA than they are. That's just a fact of life.

Save the energy for something important. Like the fight to stop the NRA from becoming a shill for one f the two political parties. Because when the other party takes power, which they eventually always will, it doesn't do us as gun owners any good to be associated exclusively with the party that just lost the election.

-Bill

 

[Molon.Labe]

Welcome to NPO marketing.
-Bill

That may be working for PETA, but I just can't imagine any serious gun owner (I mean, serious enough to buy SAF life membership) to get the cheesy plaque and the cheapo belt buckle and say "There! Now everybody will see that I'm a true RKBA supporter, even aunt Edna and uncle Bob when I hang that plaque on the barn door! I really got my money worth!"
If that's NPO marketing, SAF needs to seriously reconsider their choice of marketing firm they hired.

When I got SAF life membership junk, I sent them an e-mail in which I expressed my disappointment of how they use the funds I provided in expressions eerily similar to OP's.
If everybody does the same, maybe SAF will stop insulting contributors with useless ego-boosting garbage.
This kind of marketing may actually work, but it APPEARS as if they're wasting my hard-earned dough left and right, and makes me second-guess where I'm going to send my next donation.
SAF should realize that.

 

[Moderator]

about the NRA: isnt everyone a member of the NRA just for the gun insurance?



then they send me a letter saying that if i renew today, my gun insurance will go up to $3000,

I have more than that in optics alone.