Charities come calling, a lot

Charities come calling, a lot: "Charities come calling, a lot
Robert Franklin
February 1, 2005 CHARITY0201

More charity requests came cascading through the mail slot at Donna Stelmaszewski's house one recent afternoon just as she was showing a couple of visitors last year's charity mail: About 1,430 letters seeking money for heart, cancer, disaster, hospital, religious groups and others.
Stelmaszewski saved them all -- the pleas to buy crafts for hospitalized veterans, to keep Indian elders from freezing to death, to feed hungry blind campers, to make driving 'a prayerful act.'
She only gives to about 20 charities a year, she said, but her 27 charity letters each week include requests from groups she has never heard of."