CafePress held a poll to determine which 2 "autism organizations" to give a percentage of money from sales of "autismawareness2012" items to in April.

The good news: ASAN was one of the organizations.

The bad news: Autism Speaks was the other.

Interested in telling CafePress why this was a Bad Idea, and why Autism Speaks shouldn't even be a poll option in the future?

http://www.cafepress.com

Scroll down to "Contact Us" under "Customer Service" and use their form.

And please don't buy anything from the "autismawareness2012" tag this April, since you have no way of choosing for your money to only go to ASAN.

Let them do their own thing. We shouldn't order them to not donate to Autism Speaks.

The problem is that Autism Speaks basically controls the message about autism. If we don't get our counter message out there, the only people spreading the message will be comparing autism to a disease. Putting pressure on the donors of the organization to stop is a valid tactic.

I really don't think it is, maybe I'm wrong but it just seems like we're controlling them. They're not doing anything wrong to me, if they want to donate to them, they should.

It's true that CafePress can donate to whichever charities they want. They don't have to stop just because we're emailing them to say we don't like it.

The point is that CafePress is a business, and, as such, they donate to charities for publicity. If any actions they take are creating bad publicity, it would be in their best interest to stop.

To use a somewhat draconian example, imagine if some random hypothetical company were donating to the KKK. They would be free to do as they wish, but it would be very bad publicity for them to do so. My guess is that most people would not think it wrong to contact that company and request that they stop.

Autism Speaks is not like the KKK, I don't care how much you guys hate it.

You missed the point. I never said that Autism Speaks was like the KKK. All I said is that if you don't like the actions that a company is taking, you're absolutely justified in contacting them to tell them how you feel about it.

Alright, I'd still trust Autism Speaks over you guys though.

We mostly follow the lead of the ASAN nowadays in regards to US-centric issues.

There's an ASAN chapter near you, at the State Uni, why not go talk to them? They'll be able to present a much better case in person than we can over the internet.

AutSpks doesnt need more contributions.

Collecting an average of 50 million dollars a year, seems like they have already collected more than their share of the pie.

Then why come onto this forum?

If I remember correctly, Cafe Press, last year was going to donate all the money to Autism Speaks and they were convinced by feedback from the autistic community to allow people to vote for a selection out of a group of autism organizations that included ASAN, to share half of the donations with.  

I can't remember if ASAN won out in the competition last year or not.

This year there were a group of several organizations, that included both autism speaks and asan, and ASAN was selected by those that voted in the poll along with Autism Speaks.

I don't see a problem with writing them to try to convince them not to put autism speaks in the poll, next year, if one doesn't want to see them there, any more than trying to get someone added into the poll as was done last year.  That's a customers preference and right.

But, objectively speaking, from strictly a business perspective, it's not likely that the company will overule a good portion of their customers, in taking Autism Speaks completely out of the poll,  when they were the highest selected organization along with ASAN out of a group of several organizations.

A more reasonable request, if one wants to see the company actually respond with a business based action, might be to take only one winner next year out of the group of competitors, if one doesn't want to see ASAN share the donations with Autism Speaks. It would probably take more than half of the number of individuals that voted, to contact them on this issue, for them to act on a request like that, but if enough effort were put into it, it might happen.

Especially if the company received a considerable greater number of votes for ASAN than they did for Autism Speaks.

Skyblue1 provided a good rationale, to be provided to the company for such a decision to be made, in that ASAN rarely has an avenue to receive donations from the general public, and needs the additional funding, much more than Autism Speaks who is already gaining 50M in donations.

They won't likely make the decision based on the rationale that someone doesn't like autism speaks, because it would be an emotional based, rather than a business based decision, that they would not be able to back up with their customers, who might question the change in policy.

I was in Toy 'r us last week.  They were asking for money for Autism Speaks.  I wanted to tell the clerk exactly why I was not interested in funding that charity unfortunately I was too busy firstly insisting on a price check and after all that trying to get my change when he short changed me for $5.  Such an imbecile who can't figure out how to give back change with a cashier register that calculates it -- is he even going to know what Autism Speaks is?

Um, ok? What does that mean?

i think the point, and please ignore me if someone already said this, is that we as people with autism should have at least some say as to how charities help us, and which ones we want to help us. we have no power to control anyone, but if an organisation is supporting a charity trying to fund a cure that probably doesn't exist, or does exist and so leads to people aborting their children on the basis that they have a form of autism (like they already do with down's) then i think it's important to have a say in that matter, as plenty of us aren't interested in a cure.

if an organisation learns that, for example, ASAN, is much more popular with actual autistic people than, for example, autism speaks, then hopefully that will influence them to help a charity that seems to be more beneficial to the actual people they are trying to help. to my mind, it's more about having our say, and for that say to be at least considered even if it ultimately isn't taken on board, than trying to tell people what to think, as, like i said, people with autism should have a say about what support they are given by a charity.

hope that made sense, i sort of forgot what i was talking about halfway through...

This post was last modified: 04-23-2012 11:12 PM by nialll.