Do you get a truckload of charities and non-profits sending you requests for donations? They can really pile up–especially at holiday time!
This scenario may sound familiar…
You write a check to a charity. A few months later another donation request from the same charity lands in your mailbox. You don’t remember whether you’ve donated to them or not so you do one of two things:
• you send them more money
• you toss the envelope on your desk and now it’s clutter
Today’s Organizing Quick Tip will help you keep track of all of those donation requests…
‘donation request’ envelopes.
Follow these steps to keep those donation requests under control…
• Get a small box–approximately the size of a shoe box. An example:
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| Stockholm Photo Box from The Container Store |
• Place the box in an area close to where the mail enters the house. When a donation envelope comes in the mail, place it in that box.
• Go through the box every three months to sort and purge for duplicates. I guarantee–you WILL have duplicates!
• After Thanksgiving, sort and purge the the donation envelopes one last time and decide which organization(s) you’ll donate to. Spread the piles across your dining room table or sofa if you need a lot of room.
• Make your donations in December–once a year (if possible). That way you’ll have no problem remembering when you sent your charitable donations. This eliminates the need to look back at a year’s worth of checkbook and credit card statements to see when and who you donated to.
• If you don’t already have one, create a ‘tax file’ for papers you’ll need to collect for tax purposes.
• Place receipts for your charitable donations in the tax file.
• Empty your ‘donation request’ box and start over.
I recently set up this system for a client and she said it has made her life so much easier in these ways:
• It organized all of her donation requests in one spot.
• It allowed her to notice when she had multiple envelopes from the same charity/non-profit.
• By doing her donations once a year, she no longer has to try and remember or look back in a check book register or credit card statement to see if she already made a donation.
This Donation Request System (DRS) will save you time, money, stamps, and brain power. Give it a try–let me know in the comments below how it works for you!
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Stacey is a Professional Organizer, Virtual Organizer, and Author in Bergen County, New Jersey specializing in home organizing, time, and paper management. She is the author of The Organized Bride’s Thank You Note Handbook: Let Systems and 101 Modern Sample Thank You Notes Take You From Overwhelmed to Organized.
Contact Stacey to Get Started!
Oh my goodness, yes, yes and yes! This can get so out of control, and because they keep sending you requests, it is easy to lost track about what you have already given. We follow a similar system. It is fairly thought provoking to see how many duplicates you get. By doing this all at once, you can prioritize your giving, and keep track of all the receipts. Love this post!
Isn’t it amazing to see how many donation requests we get in a year–and some from the same organization over and over? My client couldn’t believe it. We covered her dining room table in envelopes! Now she does a half-year purge of her bin and the table is no longer covered in envelopes come December.
This is a great system. I don’t do any of these things, but I may have to start!
Janet–I hope I’ve inspired you! It’s an easy project to start at the beginning of the year.
I love your simple and easily implementable DRS! Way to go, Stacey. I can only imagine how happy you made your client. It’s so true that the more you give, the more frequently you receive requests. Many of my clients feel guilty not donating because the requests also come with free things like stationery, coins, etc.
Thanks, Linda. My client is so happy with this system, she told me she tells everyone about it! And now that it’s December, we’re going to be going through her donation envelope box soon and my client will have a much easier time making her charitable donations. She does, though like to keep all those ‘free’ address labels. I had to convince her to purge some of those last year!
It is an overwhelming thing to get so many donation requests.Most people just want the mail to stop. But then I’ve had sweet seniors that love to give. I can see this system working for them.
I hope this system will help your ‘sweet’ seniors. The client I created it for is a senior, too! Thanks, Elva for your comment.