Nickels For Your Nightmares

I received something tremendously helpful in the mail this week. In fact, I received two of these somethings, and I’d like to tell you all about it. I consider myself a fairly charitable person. I’ve never had a lot of money to donate to the causes I support, but I always have time and energy to devote to those causes-- with the intention of convincing people that do have money to cough it up. But, no more! You see, on consecutive days this week, I received information from charitable organizations in the mail. The mailers informed me that for just a nickel, I could make a difference. First, on Tuesday, an envelope from UNICEF telling me “a nickel could save a child’s life” Wednesday I was asked “can a nickel really help end MS?” Included in the UNICEF envelope was a two-page letter describing the work UNICEF does (all very commendable), a postage-paid return envelope (presumably for my donation cheque), three dozen very lovely, full-colour, personalized address labels, and a nickel. Yes, perhaps even the very nickel that could save a child’s life. From the letter, “Every nickel counts.” A proclamation the fine folks at UNICEF found important enough to not only italicize, but also underline and include as a post-script. Now, apparently prepared for jackasses like me to receive these envelopes with nickels and opportunities to save lives, they’ve even included another piece of paper detailing the fact their campaign is supposedly more successful when they send an actual nickel than when they just send $1.25 worth of paper and stickers. Furthermore, the nickel was a brand new 2008 nickel, which leads me to believe UNICEF even has some kind of deal worked out with the Royal Canadian Mint to get first crack at the new nickels. I can’t imagine those sorts of deals come for free. The MS Society, they at least used a little less paper (actually, a lot less), but the whole sheet of paper is a roll of stickers. They sent 90 return address stickers to me-- featuring exotic birds, don’t cha know. And, of course, a nickel. Again, a brand new 2008 nickel, with a giant thumb print, and upside down on the page. UNICEF may have wasted more money sending this junk to me, but at least their nickel was facing the right way. I understand these great causes need all the support they can get, and lord knows I’d rather have a mailbox full of this crap than to have to watch those oh-so-depressing commercials. But there has got to be a better way than actually sending nickels to people. All getting a nickel from these organizations did for me was to piss me off. And now I’ve decided they must actually be pretty well-off if they’re sending nickels all over the country. Let’s say they mail this junk to just 10,000 Canadians. According to the literature, that $500 could practically pay for a whole air-drop worth of medical supplies, or pay for a MS-patient’s caregiver for a week. So now who’s the jackass? Me for shitting all over these charities’ ridiculous campaigns? Or these charities for wasting money that other hard-working Canadians have donated? Image source: right here on Blogger