A few days ago, a lumpy letter arrived in the mail. I say lumpy because I could feel something soft bulging inside the envelope, and not unusually the message on the front of the envelope let me know that there was a special gift inside for me. This was a promotional letter from a charity encouraging me to become a donor, the socks apparently intended as an inducement. I wonder how the charity’s marketing staff decided that this would work with me. Perhaps they thought that I would consider the gesture a kind one that makes me feel like reciprocating the kindness by making a one-off donation or even better becoming a regular donor.
Alternatively, a less sympathetic view is that the gift is designed to induce a sense of guilt and obligation in me: an ‘oh bugger, I suppose I had better donate’ feeling.
Or does the marketing team think that a vague combination of these anticipated emotional responses will lead me to hesitate before I discard the accompanying letter and instead read it and perhaps then decide to become a donor?
But none of these scenarios was the case. Instead, I thought, oh, please not again, why is yet another charity wasting money by sending me stuff that I don’t need and don’t want? Furthermore, what do I do with it? Forewarned with the knowledge that the envelope contained an object that I don’t want, I was tempted to just throw it unopened straight into the rubbish bin. However, I am reluctant to do that because the envelope and letter should be thrown in the recycling bin and the plastic window of the envelope and the gift, complete with the plastic bag in which it was packed, need to go into the general waste. Aside from the nuisance of having to complete this tedious sorting and disposal process, which in turn forces me to see and handle the gift, I feel guilty and exasperated at wasting the socks and adding to land waste. So, the best I could do was to discard the envelope, its plastic window and the letter appropriately, and drop the socks into a charity bin at our local shopping centre. Ok, done!
No, here we go again. This time it was an A4 envelope, sans the clear window but with a picture of a cloth shopping bag and words saying ‘Can you help us with the heavy lifting? Your free gift inside…’
My strategy this time was to return the package to the sender. In the past I have done this and placed the package inside another envelope which also contained a letter describing my concerns. Returning the package doesn’t really solve the problem but it does let the charity know that the strategy didn’t work with at least one person.
Let me be clear. I do not resent charities reaching out to me for donations. As it happens, I am a regular donor to a number of charities and give one-off donations to others each year. In doing so, my decisions are based on local and international causes that I think warrant support and that I care about the most.
I just wish that charities would stop using this dubious method to promote their causes and to encourage me to become a donor or to increase my commitment to them. For me at least, the strategy is counterproductive.
May 2026
Meandering Thoughts 