I get e-mail spam from all kinds of sites I’ve given my address to. I don’t mind the stuff from orgs like Conservation International, Partners in Health, World Wildlife Fund (although they do send a lot more e-mails than the others, which is starting to get annoying). The e-mails keep these worthy organizations at the forefront of my mind so that when I do have an extra few bucks and a gift occasion (or a wild hair), I sometimes donate money.
I got a WWF spam mail yesterday featuring e-cards you can send people for Earth Day, including this series:
I have a green tip for WWF: Stop Sending Me Junk Mail. Not only do they bombard me with e-mails, they also send me shit in the mail. Tons of it. All the time. Air mail. All the way to Paris.
Here’s what I got this week (They did not send the shoe. Duh. It’s there for scale. Size 8.5 US.):
You get the idea. The trees, the transport of raw materials, the emissions from processing the inks and the paper and running the machines printing this crap I don’t even look at (that’s what the Internet’s for people!), the cost and jet fumes to get it here, the cost of personnel to stuff and mail envelopes… What do you think all of this costs? I want those dollars protecting orangutans, goddammit.
I seem to remember asking them through their site to take me off the real-mail list (could have been CI though). Never got a response, whoever it was. When I donated to WWF once there was a gifty thing, recycling bags that I wanted them to send to my son in California instead of to me all the way in fucking France. Not an option. Couldn’t opt not to receive the gifty things either.
I just went back to see if they had changed that. You do have the option to make a regular donation and pass on the gifty thing. But I went to adopt an animal (a gray wolf: Sarah Palin’s favorite for target practice from the air):
I tried to put “0″ in the quantity of “Adoption Kits” and got this:
#FAIL.
They need to give donors an account where they can go in and set their preferences. I’d choose no real mail and only one e-mail a month. I want alternate shipping addresses (like Amazon, hello, not hard to do) for gifty things or to skip gifty things altogether. I do not need a stuffed wolf. Nobody needs a stuffed wolf. You listening WWF?
So my growing perception of WWF is that it’s wasteful, aggressive and it doesn’t respect its donor base. I’m about to unsubscribe from their e-mails and give my money exclusively to Conservation International for eco causes even though they don’t have a cute panda logo. They seem more austere and respectful of the environment and their users’ mental and real bandwidth.
So there.