I still get tons of political calls, texts, and emails from donations I made around 2016 and 2020. Is there any organization I can use to donate money that won’t harass me in the future or sell my data to someone else who will?
(I got a text soliciting a political donation while I was typing this question!)
They all add donors to lists and send them solicitations based on the premise that a former donor doesn’t need as much convincing for their cause. It’s fairly easy to unsubscribe as soon as you get the first message, but by then your email may have already entered a partnership pool, so you’ll start getting similar solicitations.
Best way around it is to use an email anonymizing service, or one way phone/text numbers. Or you can treat it like a game and donate under username+charity@mailservice.com, then watch how many more messages you get to that specific address.
To answer your main question, eff.org and msf.org are pretty good charities. You can also check https://www.charitynavigator.org/.
If it’s purely political orgs, local groups are less likely to have aggressive fundraising arms.
And more likely to need your donation!