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Salvation Army ditched by donors and volunteers

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Brictoria
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16 Dec 2021, 10:40 pm

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Salvation Army chapters across the country are reporting massive shortages in volunteer hours and toy donations just weeks after the charity distributed (and then pulled) a controversial guide calling on white people to confront their "racist attitudes."

Some 20,000 volunteer hours have gone unfilled for the Salvation Army's Red Kettle campaign this year, which historically represents about 33% of the charity's total yearly donations. The charity has also reported substantial shortages of toy and gift donations in some parts of the country, such as New Jersey, where donations are down 30% across the state.

The reports of volunteer and donation shortages come less than three weeks after the Salvation Army pulled an internal "Let's Talk About Racism" guide that discouraged "colorblindness" and called on white people to "evaluate racist attitudes and practices."

[...]

Salvation Army Marketing Manager Angel Fields Mitchell told CBS Minnesota that the COVID-19 pandemic was to blame for the volunteer shortages, but a recent Rasmussen poll suggests that the blowback to the group's anti-racism guide damaged its credibility among the public and potential donors.

The poll found that the percentage of respondents who had an unfavorable view of the group increased from 11% to 41% after respondents were informed of the guide and told the charity was "training members in the belief that America is a structurally racist society." And the percentage of respondents who reported having a favorable opinion of the Salvation Army dropped from 81% to 41% after learning of the guide.

Leaders of local Salvation Army chapters have expressed alarm within the last week over volunteer and donation shortages.

Source: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/salvation-army-ditched-by-donors-and-volunteers-after-disastrous-release-of-anti-racism-guide



QuantumChemist
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17 Dec 2021, 11:32 am

It makes me wonder what the high ups were thinking. Shaming some of those who donate to your cause will tend to get you less donations. That is basics economics at play. Why would you donate time and/or money to a cause that blames you for all the past errors in society?

It is ok to have conversations about confronting racism and the changing social attitudes against it, but the approach must be correct or there will be blowback. This is an example of blowback plain and simple. One person alone cannot fix the issue. Humans are a flawed species from the start. We are predepositioned to judge others who are not like us. It is part of human nature and has been going on since the dawn of time. Not an easy thing to fix.

I deal with this issue almost every day at work. Certain coworkers have openly called to get rid of “older white men” in my department because “we cause all of the racism” in the world. They want to replace people like me with their friends in the name of “fixing racism”. This statement comes mainly from relatively young (30s) white women with PhDs. I see it as just another form of discrimination against others. My way to handle it is to quietly tape their outbursts and I will present them as evidence of discrimination when I leave to go to another job.



funeralxempire
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17 Dec 2021, 11:43 am

There's plenty of good reasons to not support the Salvation Army. They're anti-choice, they're anti LGBTQ, they're notorious for stealing from and abusing people making use of their shelters, including kicking them out and seizing their possessions as donations, they're hostile towards harm-reduction strategies for substance abuse. The more research one does, the more serious faults one will find with the Salvation Army.

https://external-preview.redd.it/7RtDXT ... 88dd4f9dce


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roronoa79
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17 Dec 2021, 3:57 pm

Brictoria wrote:
Quote:
Salvation Army chapters across the country are reporting massive shortages in volunteer hours and toy donations just weeks after the charity distributed (and then pulled) a controversial guide calling on white people to confront their "racist attitudes."

Some 20,000 volunteer hours have gone unfilled for the Salvation Army's Red Kettle campaign this year, which historically represents about 33% of the charity's total yearly donations. The charity has also reported substantial shortages of toy and gift donations in some parts of the country, such as New Jersey, where donations are down 30% across the state.

The reports of volunteer and donation shortages come less than three weeks after the Salvation Army pulled an internal "Let's Talk About Racism" guide that discouraged "colorblindness" and called on white people to "evaluate racist attitudes and practices."

[...]

Salvation Army Marketing Manager Angel Fields Mitchell told CBS Minnesota that the COVID-19 pandemic was to blame for the volunteer shortages, but a recent Rasmussen poll suggests that the blowback to the group's anti-racism guide damaged its credibility among the public and potential donors.

The poll found that the percentage of respondents who had an unfavorable view of the group increased from 11% to 41% after respondents were informed of the guide and told the charity was "training members in the belief that America is a structurally racist society." And the percentage of respondents who reported having a favorable opinion of the Salvation Army dropped from 81% to 41% after learning of the guide.

Leaders of local Salvation Army chapters have expressed alarm within the last week over volunteer and donation shortages.

Source: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/salvation-army-ditched-by-donors-and-volunteers-after-disastrous-release-of-anti-racism-guide

Salvation Army decided to piss off both sides. Pissed off the conservatives by treating racism as a thing that exists and affects people, pissed off liberals by treating fags like me as unworthy of charity.


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