Salvation Army must have thought my money was racist too.
I give multiple times of the year during various holiday times to the MS/AL region and as hurricanes, floods, etc happen for specific events across the US.
When I donated mid November, it popped up a survey before transaction was completed that I had never seen before. It asked my race, a couple other questions and the last one was basically would I apologize for being white; my answer was "no". (don't remember exact wording)
My donation went thru and was accepted and then I got a notice that my credit card had been rejected. ok, weird.
I did it two more times and they were rejected.
I called my credit card company. I had made five or six donations to other groups that day and thought maybe the card had been flagged. My card had not been flagged. She said the first two donation attempts had indeed been accepted by SA and then voided/rejected by SA and that the third attempt had not been accepted at all by Salvation Army.
On November 28, the national SA sent me an email. (see below; bold is mine)
They shouldn't have cancelled my donation if the claims were false. The only thing I had done was refuse to apologize for being white in the survey. No other explanation for them not accepting my donation. I have made donations for almost 40 years.
Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas
This special time of year is a welcome reminder of the things we are grateful for—and for the power of service on behalf of those who are less fortunate. Without your support of time and generosity, The Salvation Army would not be able to serve 30 million people each year who are in need.
Despite that good work, you may be aware of some recent attacks on The Salvation Army that misrepresent our beliefs on race and racism. Some individuals and groups have attempted to mislabel our organization to serve their own agenda(s). They have claimed that we believe our donors should apologize for their skin color, that The Salvation Army believes America is an inherently racist society, and that our organization has abandoned its beliefs for one ideology or another.
We wanted you to hear from The Salvation Army directly that those claims are false, and they distort the very goal of our work. We invite you to read The Salvation Army's full response to these claims here.
You can be sure that, despite these false claims, we remain undeterred in our mission because vulnerable Americans need our help—and yours. We remain deeply grateful for the support of a generous public—people from all walks of life and from all parts of the country—who help us meet human need wherever it exists. God bless you, and Happy Holidays.
