Monday, August 02, 2021

"Fight the Fines" campaign and charitable tax receipts: Weirder and weirder.

We are so not done with the strangeness that is Rebel News' "Fight the Fines" campaign and its insistence that you can get a charitable tax receipt as long as you donate to a totally unrelated organization, something the Canada Revenue Agency pretty clearly insists is not allowed:



 
The additional weirdness that was just brought to my attention is the following snippet from Rebel's donation web page:



Here's the strangeness: Normally, when you set up a fundraiser, you're either a registered CRA charity (which allows you to dispense tax receipts), or you're not, and you normally make it absolutely clear which is which in very large letters so there is no misunderstanding. And if you can generate tax receipts, you would normally shout that from the rooftops so donors know they can claim that next tax time.

To the best of my knowledge, I have never seen a single fundraising campaign that gives donors a choice to either be eligible for a tax receipt or not. Why would any fundraiser or campaign set up two donation mechanisms when the one that is tax-deductible would work and is clearly superior? (And lest any idiot replies with, "Yeah, well, what if a donor isn't interested in a tax receipt?", then they can simply not request one. Duh.)

The above choice in fundraising portal is simply baffling, and anyone who thinks they can explain it is welcome to expound on that in the comments section.

BY THE WAY, it is equally baffling that, for a CRA-registered charity that promises charitable tax receipts for Rebel's "Fight the Fines" campaign, their web page says nothing about that campaign.

Curious, is it not?

OOOOOHHHHHHHHH MYYYYYYYYYYYYY ... Anonymous evil minion just dropped on me a possible rationale for the very strange donation setup for Rebel News' "Fight the Fines" campaign, and it is a doozy. You might want to check back tomorrow morning for the ugly (and wildly speculative) details.

2 comments:

Purple library guy said...

Y'know, I see a contrast between the two options. Option one, donating to Rebel News, says "to help us pay their legal bills". Option two does NOT say what the donation is for, it just says you'll get a Canadian tax-deductible receipt for it. Arguably, the tax-deductible one could be used for ANYTHING. Or at least, for whatever The Democracy Fund usually does with charitable donations.

CC said...

Oh, there's way more to it than that, just give me time.