The 8 Most Insulting Attempts to Raise Money for a Cause
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Ian Fortey
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- August 09, 2009
So you have an important cause you want to raise money for, or at least it's important to you. But people are slow to part with their hard-earned cash. How do you go about the careful process of trying to get them to take dough out of their pocket and stuff it into yours?
Well it turns out it's difficult, especially if you're a prick.
8The 9/11 Dove Shoot
Every fundraiser needs a hook. You can't just say you want to raise money for syphilis research and offer people the chance to touch your syphilitic wang for $5. You'll barely make $100 that way. You need something that will make people say, "Fuck yeah I want to do that, and it's for a good cause!"
And what better way to raise money for a Republican Superintendent of Education than by shooting doves, the symbol of peace? Well, there is one better way; do it on September 11.
It's possible the entire event was some manner of incredibly Swiftian satire, but the Republican party was never really known for being quite so intentionally hilarious (even though this was just a few months after Dick Cheney shot some poor bastard on his own hunting trip). Maybe it's the fact that Karen Floyd was a candidate in South Carolina and things just work a little differently down there.
The blue areas represent crazy.
It's probably saddest for the doves, of course, who have no idea that they've been made a symbol of peace at all, and even if they did, would have real difficulty grasping why, as a symbol of peace, they need to be shot at to raise money for hawkish politicians wanting to stick it to the anti-war movement. We don't expect you to understand the intricacies of American politics, little dove.
7Tits for Tots
What's hard about giving money to a good cause is you know there are so many others that deserve it. You contribute to microloans to help Third World farmers, but maybe you should have given to cancer research instead. You contributed to the March of Dimes but maybe you should have given money to women who want bigger boobs.
Yes, the sad truth is that we live in a world in which some women can't even afford to have silicone shoved into their tits. Fortunately, myfreeimplants.com is leading the charge against this horrible scourge of modernity by saying "No" to natural breasts and yes to helping disadvantaged ladies get the funding they need to become the proud owners of bulbous sweater kittens.
For the same price of thousands of cups of coffee, you too can sponsor boobs.
Using the power of the Internet, the website joins these underprivileged women with semi-anonymous benefactors whose only desire is to see these ladies benefit from improved self-esteem and confidence and at no time does anyone even ponder wanking to images of big, supple boobies. That would be crass. Sure, some ladies choose to reward donors with nudie pics, but you don't have to. Good luck getting your money, prude.
Ingrate.
Ladies sign up for the site just as men do and, once someone has donated money to her cause, they gain access to her pictures and contact information, making it a fair trade sort of deal, a few bucks towards boobs in exchange for stalking rights to be shared amongst a few dozen or hundred other guys.
Naturally a site so dedicated to helping improve self image goes above and beyond by offering women and men whatever procedure they require to help better themselves, except for none of that is true. The site only serves women and the only procedure they'll help anyone get is breast augmentation. Because they care.
6Pretend to be Handicapped Day
Nothing is more adorable than dressing up your child in a humiliating costume that may give them some sort of complex later in life, except for doing the same thing to your dog. But no one is raising funds with dogs in hilarious costumes that we know of, so we'll stick to children. But we can't just dress them up like Yoda or Snarf or whatever it is the kids are into these days. No, we need to dress them up as the handicapped. For charity.
He's smiling because he's not actually blind.
Confused? So were the parents of students at an Australian Public School when they got a letter telling them their kids needed to dress up a little gimpy to raise money for a clinic in Bangladesh. The school was offering prizes for the best costume and encouraged kids to be creative in thinking up what disability they could represent.
It's fascinating to think that there is more than one adult in Australia who thinks there's a tasteful way to pretend to have a handicap. Will you twitch and bat your chest like the classic retard while eating gum off the floor? Or perhaps get ahold of some kind of degenerative muscle disorder and wheel your way to class?
No, this is like blackface; it doesn't matter how good your intentions are, if next Halloween you go as "Guy who has Cerebral Palsy," you're going to get chased down the street. Now picture an entire school full of children who've been given a blank check to do that and... actually, we would pay money to watch that whole thing unfold.
5The Undercover Scientology Fundraiser
Probably the first rule of any fundraising campaign is to be sure that the people you're soliciting money from don't already hate you. It's way easier to raise money for something like spaying and neutering dogs if you're the local humane society as opposed to, say, a group of skinheads.
Still, some folks try to be a little crafty with who they are and what they're doing when it comes to raising money. You may be wondering just what sort of lowlife would omit important details like who was running a fundraiser. The answer, of course, is Scientologists.
Back in 2007, when Tom Cruise was busy saving the Earth from aliens, two second string Scientologists (Matt Lauer and Brooke Shields) were headlining a Narconon event in Hawaii. Lisa Marie Presley and John Travolta were to be guests of honor at a $2500 a ticket concert to raise cash for Scientology's anti-drug program.
Scientologists were expecting about 1,000 people to attend, but they'd neglected to mention the term "Scientology" anywhere in the advertising for the event. And while arguably you could say people should know they're behind Narconon and that shouldn't be an issue, when a local newspaper took the time to point out that it was, in fact, a Scientology event, just short of nobody bought a ticket.
Narconon in full swing.
That's right; when the community found out it was a Scientology anti-drug event, they rose up as one and said, "We'd rather have the crack, thank you."
4Burqas for Freedom
The entrepreneurial spirit knows no bounds, including those of taste and tact and especially irony. Exemplifying this in a most head-scratching and fun-with-oppression sort of way is one American lady and her team of Afghani women who are busily creating burqas for you. Tiny little burqas. For our wine bottles.
If you're not familiar, a burqa is traditional garb for women in places like Afghanistan which sort of resembles a five-year-old's ghost costume. Before the Taliban took control in Afghanistan, most women didn't wear these things, they wore standard burqas that showed the face. But if there's one thing the Taliban hate, it's everything. And that includes faces. How the fuck can you get anything done in an oppressive, arid wasteland of opium and despair with all those faces around? Best to cover them up.
Since the sort of freedom that's come to Afghanistan, a group called Women of Hope came in to help the local women gain independence and all that good stuff and apparently the best way to do that is by having these women sew little burqas and Taliban dolls for Americans.
The women themselves admit they have no idea why Americans like this shit but, hey, people who feel the need to decorate wine bottles have different tastes than the rest of us. Even though this is kind of like Jews in concentration camps making bean bag Hitlers and Easy Bake Ovens to raise money for Jewish causes, no one really seems to mind.
3"Celebrate Your Friend's Memory, by Giving Us Cash."
Tasteless political fundraising is not the strict purview of Americans, it's a world wide trend. Soliciting door to door or just hoping past supporters are willing to shell out money again just isn't enough for some and they are willing to pursue every dollar they can get their hands on, even to the grave. Or at least a seat at your funeral.
The Scottish National Party, making no effort to counter the stereotype of cheap Scotsmen, hatched a plan to put donation envelopes on seats at memorial services.
Speaking of stereotypes, this is what every Scottish person looks like.
Sure, Uncle Argyle just got blown to smithereens in a tragic haggis accident, but what's that stuck to your ass? Don't you want to make a donation to the SNP? And while you're at it, Argyle's not going to be needing that ring anymore is he, may as well pop that in the envelope too.
2Drunk Driving Awareness Fundraiser (At the Bar)
Sometimes thinking outside the box is the key to any good event. Are you hosting a child's birthday party? You could go to Chuck E. Cheese, or you could see if any local strip clubs are free. Children love boobs and it'll give the parents something to do as well. That's clever. Likewise, if you're hosting an event to stamp out drunk driving, you could do it at the local 4H club, or you could go all out and have it at a bar.
The Dori Slosberg Foundation, which apparently has a love/hate relationship with drunk drivers, decided to host a safe driving fundraiser at the Blue Martini Lounge in Boca Raton. Tickets were only $20 and included a free drink, which is both awesome and head-scratchingly hilarious.
There were appetizers, a raffle and presumably people who got shitfaced were encouraged to take a cab home--or at least drive super slow just to be on the safe side.
"Alright, just maintain."
The event organizers defended their choice of location, despite local police and MADD representatives making the universal "what the fuck?" face when confronted with the details, believing that the bar afforded them the opportunity to reach a new audience. Namely drunks in a bar. Who had driven themselves there. In cars.
8Giuliani's Tactful $9.11 Fundraiser
How did we know another 9/11 fundraiser would find its way onto the list?
We all remember how Rudy Giuliani was the mayor of New York on September 11, 2001, the day his watch stopped and he was forced to live then and there for the rest of time. In the past few years, Giuliani has managed to do not a damn thing that did not involve some reference to 9/11 and very likely every morning for breakfast one of his toaster strudel's features an icing 9 and the other and icing 11 and eating it makes him feel powerful.
It's hardly surprising then that, during his bid for the Republican nomination, Giuliani held a fundraiser and came up with the brilliant idea of having everyone donate $9.11. Brilliant until other people were told about it.
Surprisingly, using a massive tragedy and epic loss of life as a cute tie in to raise money for yourself doesn't go over well with a lot of people (just ask the Girl Scouts about their infamous Chocolate Holocaust cookies). Firefighters were quick to point out that the fundraiser was rather cockbaggish and not really in good taste.
"That's a dick move there, Rudy."
Giuliani's people laid the blame for the fundraising idea on someone else, saying they had no idea what was going on and "young people" were responsible. This is what you get when you leave the 12-year-old neighbor's kid in charge.
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Instead of money, find out what else you can give these assholes in 7 Bizarre Things (And 1 Bodily Fluid) People Use as Money. Or instead of dishing it out, just hold on to it using these methods: 10 Retarded Money Saving Tips (People Are Actually Trying).
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