I’ve had run-ins of varying magnitude about this with numerous organizations over the years. The ones that I post about here are the worst of the worst. They have either overtly refused to accommodate my requests, or claimed repeatedly, but falsely, that they had done so.

Today, I am forced to add Yad Sarah to this disreputable bunch. I am sorry to do this, because the work Yad Sarah claims to do is important, and because they appear to be respected by other organizations which I respect and tend to trust. However, after my experience with them, I must wonder how efficiently and effectively they use the money entrusted to them by donors to perform their mission.

I have had to ask Yad Sarah to stop spamming me on no less than four separate occasions, in July 2004, August 2004, May 2005, and most recently July 2010. Each time I made the request, they claimed that it had been acted upon. Each of the first three times, it turned out that it had not. Although I give them credit for managing to stop spamming me for over five years after my May 2005 request, I must ask which part of “You must remove my e-mail address from any and all of your mailing lists, immediately and permanently,” which is what I wrote to them in July 2004, they are incapable of understanding.

I had similar trouble getting their American fundraising arm, Friends of Yad Sarah, to remove me from their postal mailing list. I wrote to them on three separate occasions, first by email and then twice by fax, before I finally got a response. The person who responded claimed, “This is the first request we received,” which means that either she was comfortable implying that a donor is a liar, or the organization is so shoddily run that they lose track on a regular basis of attempts by donors to contact them. At least they seem to have done the right thing when they finally responded — I haven’t received any junk mail from them since April 2009.

I encourage those who value Yad Sarah’s work and might choose to support them to seek out better run organizations that will put your money to better use.

It is worth noting that a complete inability to handle unsubscribing people from their mailing list is not this organization’s only problem with bulk mailing. I also had problems with them back in 2007 when they added me to a bulk email list without my consent and it took several requests over the course of several months to get them to remove me.

Alas, there are a few organizations whose bulk email practices are so disreputable, so shameful, so entirely unacceptable, that when all else fails, my only remaining recourse is to attempt to shame them into cleaning up their act, and to urge others not to support them financially until they’ve done so.

Today, I am forced to condemn the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) to the charity spammers’ hall of shame.

AFB spammed me in December 2007 after I gave them my email address when donating on-line.  I sent them email, asked them to stop sending me bulk email, and informed them that if they did not do so, I would have no choice but to remove them from the list of organizations I support.  They did not respond.

They spammed me again in August 2008.  I complained again.  They did not respond.

They spammed me again later that month.  I filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau.  They did not respond.

They spammed me again in January 2009.  I filed a complaint through SpamCop.  They did not respond.

They spammed me again in June 2009.  I followed the instructions in the spam for unsubscribing and again complained through SpamCop.  They did not respond.

They spammed me again today, with the same unsubscribe instructions (i.e., the instructions that I followed last time but obviously did not work) in their message.

After I publish this blog posting, I will be once again asking them to unsubscribe, this time in an email message sent to every single email address on their Web site’s “contact us” page which will include a link to my blog.  I will also once again be filing a complaint through SpamCop.  I’m not holding out much hope that any of this will actually work.

Either the people who run this organization are monumentally incompetent, or they think it’s completely OK to spam their donors, ignore unsubscribe requests, and publish unsubscribe instructions that don’t actually do anything.  Reputable organizations do not act this way.  Organizations which act this way cannot be relied upon to use wisely the funds entrusted to them by donors.  I therefore strongly urge people to find somewhere else to send their charity dollars.

UPDATE: I received the following response from AFB 41 minutes after I sent my email to everyone on their “contact us” page and told them I had outed them on my blog:

Be assured you will be removed today and will no longer receive emails from AFB. We recently discovered a glitch in our email list updating function that re-added unsubscribe and wrong addresses. I am pleased to report that we have fixed that error and now once a donor asks to be removed they will be removed forever.

My apologies that it took us a while to figure out the problem.

I leave it to my readers to decide for themselves whether this is an adequate response or “too little too late.”  Personally, I’m going to go with the latter.

They have sent me spam on November 5, 2004; December 22, 2004; January 11, 2005; December 7, 2005; December 20, 2005; March 8, 2006; May 11, 2006; May 28, 2007; and November 4, 2008.

I have complained to them about the spam on November 7, 2004; January 9, 2005; December 8, 2005; May 28, 2007, and November 4, 2008.  The one and only response I received was on January 11, 2005, when they apologized and claimed (falsely) that the spam would stop.

The American Institute Philanthropy gives Operation Smile a grade of rating of “D” (on an ABCDF scale).  In contrast, Smile Train, another charity which does similar work, gets a “B-” grade.

Because of their poor grade and their penchant for spamming, I strongly discourage people from providing any support, financial or otherwise, to Operation Smile.

They subsequently used that address to spam me on May 30, 2007. I sent them a complaint in response about the spam on May 31, telling them that I gave them my email address so they could send me a receipt, not so that they could add me to bulk email lists, and that if they ever spammed me again I’d report them to the appropriate service providers and permanently remove them from the list of organizations which we support.

They did not respond to my complaint, and they spammed me again on June 14, so I sent them another complaint, informing them that I had, as promised, complained to their service providers and permanently removed them from our charitable giving list.

That message finally got a response on the same day which read in part as follows:

Please accept our sincerest apologies. While we are new to email messaging, we take spamming very seriously and in no way is it our intention to send unwanted emails to any of our constituents. Unfortunately, there was a communication breakdown and your request to be removed from our email list did not make it to the appropriate people. I assure you that you have been removed from our email list permanently. We are also working on a policy for the school to ensure that this does not happen again.

That’s fine as far as it goes, but unfortunately, they spammed me again today, January 31, 2008. Not only that, but they included the recipient list of the spam in the “To:” header of the email, thereby violating the privacy of the 986 Perkins supporters on the recipient list of that spam, and perhaps of even more people than that if they sent out multiple such messages.

Needless to say, I sent them a rather strongly worded complaint, indicating that I had reported the spam to their service providers and ending with this:

Please give me one good reason why I shouldn’t send email to the 985 other people whose addresses you exposed suggesting to them that they complain to you and to your service providers if they are as upset as I am about your spamming and your violation of their privacy (well, actually, there are only 979 other people for me to write to, since I’ve CC’d this message to your coworkers at Perkins who appeared on the distribution list).

Shame on you.

I got back an apology a few hours later from the individual at Perkins who had sent out the email, which read in part, “I realized that I made a huge error when I put everyone’s name in the `to’ field… there is noone to blame but myself and it shouldn’t reflect on the school.” Later in the day, another individual at Perkins actually called my house to apologize, but I wasn’t home to take the call and I frankly have no interest in speaking with them about this and have no intention of calling them back.

I don’t think they’re bad people. I don’t think they’re intentionally trying to send spam to people who don’t want to receive it. However, none of that changes the fact that people who can’t handle the mechanics of only sending bulk email to people who have asked to receive it, shouldn’t be sending bulk email, period.