It’s November 6th and the Movember has begun. People all over the office, the city, and likely the world, are taking the month of November to raise awareness regarding prostate cancer. For guys who participate, they are encouraged to grow a mustache/beard/facial hair during the month and collect donations to the Movember charity. It’s going on at my work and I’ve started seeing the posts on Facebook. I however am not participating and here’s why.
As of today, I have received 11 requests either via email, Facebook, or via someone directly asking me, to participate in Movember. Not one or two. 11. ELEVEN! I have never been asked to donate to any other charity as much as I am asked to donate to Movember. For me, 11 times counts as harassment. I feel like I am bombarded everywhere to participate in this one charity fundraiser. Yet there are thousands of them that go on every year and I am never nagged to death about them. But when Movember rolls along, I get nagged and nagged and nagged about participating. Last year I had an employee corner me in the office and nag me about joining and couldn’t understand why I didn’t want to participate. This year the nagging has been worse.
I understand that people are passionate about their cause and they want people to participate. But ELEVEN TIMES?!?!?! Seriously? Enough is enough. As long as I continue to be nagged about this, I will never participate. If I got asked once or twice, maybe I would consider it. But 11 times to me is harassment. I will be steering clear.
If you want people to join in your cause, understand that nagging the hell out of them is not going to be an effective way to get them to join your cause. If the cause is worthy, and a person is so inclined, they will join up on their own. A nudge on something you are passionate about is fine but don’t go too far.
And lastly, remember that not everyone is interested in advertising to the whole world that they donated to charity X. For me, donations are something that I do rarely because there are so many out there and it’s hard to pick one. So when I do, it has a special meaning to me and I’m not really keen on telling the whole world and asking them to do the same.
