'Tis the Season

Every day I receive new gifts in the mail.  Calenders, mailing labels, calculators and notepads. Magnets and stickers and new pens to write with,  even money- dollar bills.  All from charities or community organizations seeking donations.  Strangely, they are spending money to create cheap gifts of every sort to entice me to donate.  I can't help wondering; would it not be more cost effective to just take the money they are using for promotional materials and pump it back into their fund raising efforts,  Just send me a request instead?  My husband received three calenders, ten dollars and a calculator in the last month and he has been dead for over a year.  Unlikely he will be moved to donate.  Did I mention that one of my cats made a brief appearance in the mailing list jungle a few years ago?  I don't know how this happened but Ms Abby was urgently solicited on several occasions.  I am sure she would have been pleased had she been able to read.  There are several organisations that I do support and I do not need to be reminded or guilt gifted.  I donate like clock work every year.  I wonder about the efficiency of an organization that spends large amounts of money on gifts designed to produce a financial return.  I wonder how this trend might work for say, The Salvation Army.  You walk be the SA Santa, He hands you a box of chocolates and maybe you give him a dollar or two?   I hate to think that this type of solicitation is actually successful because it would mean that none of us are just giving these days.  Instead, we receive an unrequested gift and then, probably in a fit a guilt, send money back.  Now that's depressing.