This is my main beef with animal charities too. I donate to organizations that I know are reputable...but I get the "guilt mail" and gifts just about every week!

It's terrible! I mean, they're preaching to the choir with this stuff, but I can really only afford to donate to each charity once a year...so sending me stuff every month is a waste of time and money. If they could just remind me once a year to send my donation, that would be just fine.

Just the cost of mailing so often has got to be a lot of money.

At one point, I even asked one of the charities (I think it was the ASPCA) to not send me the promotional stuff (labels, mugs, stuffed animals etc) because I wanted my money to go to the animals. They said ok, and surprisingly, I haven't gotten a lot of mail from them lately, which is good.