Fundraising by chain letter? Well, it seems Sand Lake MI thinks it’s a good idea, and it might just be working. The Grand Rapids Press Reports Someone in Apollo Beach, Fla., has kicked in a buck. More dollars have come from Sandia Park, N.M.; Mankato, Minn.; Tacoma, Wash.; and Huntsville, Ala.
The library campaign committee last month started the e-mail venture after its treasurer saw a story on television about a col-
lege student who got herself out of debt by starting an e-mail chain.
She sent out a message asking for help, and got enough money to pay her tuition and bills.
Anyone seen the email?
Dumb Idea department
This is perhaps the dumbest idea I ever heard for fund raising not because it won’t work but because it will open the flood gates for imitators. I can just see my e-mail filling up with more spam. This time it will be requests for money.
Re:Dumb Idea department
(Preface: I have not seen the e-mail)
I have to agree that this is a bit sketchy. We’ve all (or most of us) have seen the e-mails purporting to be from some foreign person asking for monetary help. With all the spoof e-mails that are going around these days, who’s to say that the e-mail we are responding to is legit or not?
I thought I had a suggestion of a better idea… having a portal up on the library website for donations. But then I remembered an e-mail I got supposedly from ebay (even had ebay.com as the url) but it was a fake email. Also, the website that was linked in the e-mail was fake, but, if you weren’t paying attention to what they were asking it looked legit. Web scammers are frighteningly adept at pretending they are something their not.