And then there are the solicitations from that bunch of weasels calling itself Smile Train.
What pisses me off about this outfit is its gall. Here's the claim:
One thing that makes us different from other charities is our "one donation" invitation. Make one gift to save one child today and we will never ask for another gift again.As the American Institute of Philanthropy wrote in an August 2010 piece entitled "Solicitation Train":
If you receive a solicitation in the mail from any charity that makes the above promise, you would be wise to be skeptical. No donor should ever feel obligated to make a contribution in order to not be solicited.In more recent solicitations, Smile Train apparently has attempted to mute criticism of its passive-aggressive pitch by including a checkbox to be removed from its mailing list. I took it up on this offer. Back in February I asked Smile Train, politely but firmly, to drop me from its list. I then gritted my teeth and waited the ridiculous six to eight weeks it apparently takes this shady outfit to make a change to its database.
Guess whose unwelcome solicitation showed up in yesterday's mail?
In case you're wondering, yesterday was about twenty weeks after my request. This latest mailing, in other words, was no mistake. This was Smile Train's gentle hint that it doesn't give a shit what I want.
I have on occasion asked to be removed from various organizations' mailing lists. Every one of them has honored my request -- except this bunch.
If Smile Train can't be trusted to honor a simple request to stop bothering people, why should you trust it with your money?
I'll say it again: Smile Train is a bunch of weasels. Don't give it a dime.
[UPDATE: Every time Smile Train harasses me, I will verbally defecate on it. The first scat was dropped in September 2011.]
My mother, who passed away in January 2008, made a donation to Smile Train about a year prior to her death. She attempted to stop the continued solicitations, to no avail. I tried writing them, and adding "Refused, return to sender" to the envelopes (which works, by the way, for the South Dakota Indians Foundation)again to no avail. The mailings have continued to this day (October 6, 2012), nearly FIVE YEARS after her death!!!! Hopeless.
ReplyDeleteEvery year I try to pick a new charity and give a donation to besides my regular ones. Smile train "give once and we won't bother you again" is a total Lie. I now get solicitations which show my 2013 donation and ask me to donate "once more". I checked the box too that said no more solicitation, but they come more frequently then before. Never again.
ReplyDeletePut it ball in their return envelope and donayte one penny. That should tell them something. If nothing else it will make them as mad as you get by receiving their unwanted mail.
ReplyDeleteIt's worse than that. My mother keeps getting "Anonymous" phone calls from them and they WON'T STOP NO MATTER WHAT. Sadly, they are not "true" anonymous phone calls since only their name shows up as anonymous. They transmit the phone number so you can't block it with Anonymous call blocking. But you can't stop them from calling either since they REFUSE to drop you from their lists despite the very claim they won't bother you being the reason she donated. Because they're a charity, they are exempted from the Do Not Call Registry requirements and so you are basically screwed short of entering EVERY SINGLE EXCHANGE NUMBER into your own personal Do Not Call List feature on your phone. They have a LOT of extensions (hundreds, possibly thousands) so good luck. They will call you all times of day and even if you do answer, most of the time NO ONE will be on the other end. They are simply calling to see at what times someone answers the phone so they know the best time to have a person call you (so they don't waste their money calling when you aren't home with a person they have to pay). Sadly, if you have an answering machine, this means they might call you at any time of night as well in the future since not all time zones are on New York's time. There needs to be new laws against this kind of harassment as the existing ones are worthless.
ReplyDeletelove love love Operation of Hope www.operationofhope.org.. Founder's never taken a dime in salary in 25 years and everybody pays their own airfare.....
ReplyDeleteThere are far worse things that could be said of any charity than that it makes a pest of itself! Does it do what it professes to do? Does most of the money donated to it actually go to that work? Does the charity meet the standards spelled out in the Better Business Bureau's Wise Giving Guide? Or does it send out calendars, note pads, address labels, or small change to make the recipient feel guilty if he doesn't contribute? If the snwer4s are three yesses and a no, the charity should be pretty legitimate!
ReplyDeleteAs for the anonymous calls that often have no live person behind them, are you sure they're not from telemarketers, political campaigns, someone with a grudge against you, or would-be burglars trying to find out when the house is empty?
The legitimacy of a charity, in my book, heavily depends on its manifested behavior. Smile Train's "pestering" is irksome enough that it makes no damned difference to me how well it carries out its primary mission (assuming that's not to solicit money, which I wonder). So I don't care whether it's a "legitimate" charity. It's a pain in the ass.
DeleteJesus Passing Stranger, what a thin skin. Damn those pesty people trying to raise money to help those kids. Definitely delegitimizes that charity in my book too. Try Preparation H.
Deletestupid comment. yeah who cares about the poor kids who are born with holes in their mouths...a charity is interrupting you from watching a rerun of CSI Miami. what damned difference does changing a child's life mean, when compared to that? passing stranger, i'll pass on your dopey 'musing'.
ReplyDeleteOuch, Anonymous. Not a lot of sensitivity toward the insensitive I see.
DeleteLike one more piece of junk mail is going to make a difference, people. I am just trying to figure out whether they are legit. Anyone who donates ANYTHING knows the more you donate, the more they ask. Seems kinda silly to throw out good works because of bad manners. I just need a credible valuation of there cost model, not a judgment on their fundraising style.
"Seems kinda silly to throw out good works because of bad manners. I just need a credible valuation of there cost model, not a judgment on their fundraising style."
DeleteI obviously won't claim to know anything about ST's overhead costs or how much of one's donation actually goes to the charitable work. However, the frequency with which I received its solicitations suggested it was wasting a lot of money printing up its come-ons, each of which used a lot of paper (a lot more than solicitations I've gotten from other charities). So in addition to being bugged by getting so many of their fat envelopes, I was pissed by the ridiculous waste of paper.
As far as I can tell, ST is legit: it's not a fly-by-night outfit or Ponzi scheme. It has been around long enough that if there were anything obviously shady about it somebody would have noticed. I can't find any info about its cost breakdown but according to a Forbes article from last month (http://www.forbes.com/sites/williampbarrett/2014/12/10/how-to-evaluate-a-charity/2/) charities are required to report their fundraising efficiency on Form 990. This should be publicly available information, but you probably have to ask ST for it directly.
go to guistar.org search for the charity, form 990 is on there
Deletetheir ads make me vomit-why print such shit?
DeleteWatch the award winning short SMILE PINKI and you will see that this is a very worthy cause. Like it or not, most charitable organizations ask repeatedly for donations. Give what you can when you can and recycle the rest of the requests!
ReplyDeleteThis Smile Train organization reminds me of a cult. They ignore requests for name removal, they are indifferent to notations that they'll be reported to the FTC, and with over $200MM in assets, should be able to correct thousands of cleft palates without my help. Their last missive came in an envelope that described them as "one of the most productive charities - dollar for deed - in the world" and cited the NYT. As it turns out, it was a quote from 2006 by the author of Freakonomics, not the NYT. They may be doing superhuman work, but they'll do it without my help.
ReplyDeleteThat organization is being run by incompetents. They have no direction and beware of the funds you donate to them. they use it for staffs and their dumbass ceo makes like half a mil a year. its all your dollars.
ReplyDeleteWhere did you get your salary info? I have been trying to find out where
ReplyDeleteI stupidly gave to Smile Train once a few years ago and I still regret it. I have requested three times now for them to take me off their mailing list but haven't had any luck. They have sent 17 solicitations to me this year already. I now just send their mailings back to them since they are posted paid envelopes and if they can waste money continually sending them to me, I figure I can waste their money as well.
ReplyDeleteThese people are very annoying. They call me every day. I never answer the phone. I constantly get mailings from them. I gave to them one time and I truly regret it. I'm on the no call list and I want them to stop calling me. If they need money they should go to all of the rich people in Hollywood and ask them for the money.
ReplyDeleteYes, and amen. I stopped giving when I found the ceo makes gazillions, while I get only social security income.
DeleteAsk the ceo if it's non profit for him!
I gave to them and not once, ever, have they contacted me or mailed me anything since! In fact I have to track them down to give them money!
ReplyDeleteFour times we give them $250.00
ReplyDeleteThen we received a letter telling us if we would give them a one time $1000.00 gift they would never ask us again for a donation.
We believed this and did send them a check for $1000.00.
Sind's that time we received requests for more money on a regular basis. This pisses us off!!
Now we will not donate any money to any charity anymore.
While I think their mission is admirable, Smile Train has not left me alone since I sent money a few months ago. Daily I get phone calls, sometimes twice a day. This is in addition to mail in my box from them. I just called them to have my number removed from their list. The number was a local number, but it came up as Smile Train. I got a recording, offering me to remove my number, and they said it might take up to 30 days. It would seem they would have more luck getting funds with new solicitations, rather than calling people who are harassed to death after making one or a few donations.
ReplyDeleteWhat incredibly pompous cynics!
ReplyDeleteThe financial information about Smile Train is publicly available as it is for all 501C3 organizations. They have an excellent record for the ratio of funds used for fundraising compared to funds that are used to help kids. There adminstrative costs are only 18%! That means that they spend 82% of all of the funds that they raise on helping kids!
This is the breakdown of their financials for 2015:
SmileTrain incurred joint costs of $17,223,447 for informational materials and activities that included fund raising materials. Of those costs, $9,797,117 was allocated to fund raising expenses and $7,426,330 was allocated to program expenses.
Fundraising costs were 18% of related contributions. (Related contributions, which totaled $149,902,378, are donations received as a result of fundraising activities.)
If you ask me, SmileTrain is one of the most responsible charities on the planet. To make accusations that they aren't a good charity because they ask for money too frequently, or they pay their CEO more than you THINK that they shouldjust shows short sighted-ness on your part. CEOs are normally recruited to non-profits based on their ability to increase funds, and their CEO has apparently done an amazing job. She could likely go somewhere else and make even more! The CEO of my company made 8 million dollars last year!
Cleft lip train has been charging me 25 dollars a month for a promised 1 time fee! Sorry for being so insensitive, but smile with no teeth is way worse ten clefted lip services
ReplyDeleteStealing my money
ReplyDeleteWhen I donated to Smile Trail a few years back , they honored me and never sent another letter or mailing.
ReplyDeleteAlso I've given smaller amounts and they never send me more correspondence.
I never get solicitations from them and when I did give, they sent a picture of the person that was operated on and never bothered me again.
So they did keep their promise to me.
Well I'm really at a crossroads here. I have seen the
ReplyDeleteheart breaking commercials on tv and was very moved by
them. Then a few days ago I received an envelope from Smile Train asking for a donation. The envelope contained a 22"X32" color map of the United States. An incentive to give I assume. After reading the mostly negative comments herein, and not being able to find
substantial proof of this organizations accomplishments with donated funds, I am stepping back
from any involvement at this time.
I donate to Smile Train monthly and I have never been called by them. One reason is I don’t answer unless I know who it is. Smile Train is not the only charity that asks for one donation and we won’t bother you again. If I get something in the mail that I’m not interested in, I put it in the recycling bin.
ReplyDelete