The word "shakedown" has gotten a lot of use lately, and I actually have run across lately what may be a real honest-to-goodness application of the word. It seems to be the season of the "would you like to donate a dollar for...?" charity shakedown.

Now let me preface this by saying, I'm not a scrooge or spendthrift, in fact I do regular volunteer work, and the occasional donation (mostly of time) to benefits and charity drives. However, increasingly as of late, I walk in to a movie theater, a fast food joint, ice-cream parlor to see it plastered with all those little "I gave" post it note things with all sorts of people's names scribbled across them. They seem to spread eventually to cover every available wall and free space.

I used to donate, it's only a dollar. I've done my share of making up funny fake, or celebrity names to sign them with, making political statements by signing it with some made up fringe group, so that people would be perhaps shocked by reading them, if they actually spent the time.

I really didn't mind so much the first time, or maybe even the first 7-8 times, but after a while the shakedown feeling kicked in. After all, if you're out in public with a bunch of friends at a movie do you really want to be the guy who DOESN'T give a dollar to save the rain forest? How about if you're on a date, do you really want your date to see you as the guy that can't spare a dollar for poor kids with whatever the disease d'jour is? - that's certainly not going to get you laid. Or when you're ordering a hamburger combo, do you really want to be made to feel guilty because you supersized when there's starving children out there... somewhere.

Again don't get me wrong, they're all good real charities I'm sure, I'm sure they're real honest-to-goodness charities with great payout to revenue quotients, they're helping real people, doing real needed work. It's just that it seems like the death of a thousand dollar bills after a while. Like you're being slowly bled to death through the wallet. When it's all said and done, just how many little post-it note thingies do you have to have with your name on it before you're "covered".

Plus in the end, are people donating a buck or two here and there and feeling they're getting off the hook? How about they do some real honest to goodness charity work? How about some volunteering, some letter writing, some real face time with these people. There's tons of perfectly good charities out there that need people, there's even groups that do nothing but line volunteers up with charities. Plus on a side note, do you really want the fast food restaurants getting all the tax breaks? Maybe we should all be donating enough where we actually have to list it on our tax returns, and not thinking of charities as places that just keep our pockets from jingling.

So when I get these half-hearted pleas, from minimum wage workers that start with "Hi, would you like to donate a dollar to...". I no longer lie with "Oh, you guys got me the other day". I just say "sorry, I do volunteer at XYZ." I usually get blank stares back because they don't see the connection. Sometimes they just repeat "Hi, would you like to donate a dollar to..." I do it pretty easily and pretty guilt free, because I actually do volunteer work, and though I don't have a ton of money to contribute like some people, I do make a conscious effort to give back.