Great post, thanks for bringing the FTC site to our attention. I had never thought of checking out charities with the FTC. Charity Navigator is another good source for checking out charities before you donate time and money.

Someone claiming whatever they are selling (magazines, newspapers, or whatever), a portion goes to help the Girl Scouts, Special Olympics, Boys and Girls Club of America, Police Athletic League, etc.

I used to work for a telemarketing company that sold magazines over the phone, contacting anyone that was listed in the phone book. (I only lasted about a week, before my conscience made me quit)

Their sales pitch always included some organization meant to tug at your heart strings, with claims that buying one of their seriously inflated magazine subscriptions would help that organization.

The truth was that while the company did send these nonprofit organizations a portion of the purchase price like they said would, very little of the purchase price went to those organizations. The amount was usually like $0.10 from a $75.00 subscription.

They made it seem like the reason why the price was so inflated was because of the contributions to the charities, when in fact that wasn’t true.

It was to make more sales at a higher price than if they had sold the same subscriptions at $20.00 without the charity names involved, like everyone else.

The sad part is that what they were doing was legal, since they didn’t actually lie about making contributions to the organizations…it just wasn’t as much as the customer assumed.

And that’s the point. Don’t assume. Ask questions, specifically how much will go to that organization they are claiming to be selling merchandise for, especially if the price of that merchandise seems inflated.

Honestly, if you want to help those nonprofit organizations more, buy a normal subscription from someone else selling it at a reasonable price and send the charity the difference, directly. Or skip the magazines and send the whole thing directly to the charity.