Has anyone else noticed the new push by charities to even out contributions by pushing monthly donation deductions -- and the parallel development of cloud drive technology?

I’m not sure I get the connection between these phenomenon, but what the charities are doing does make sense in terms of evening put cash flow.

As for cloud storage, I’m inherently distrusting the whole concept.

All it takes is one disastrous outage (for whatever reason no matter how valid) on the part of the hosting company and all that wprk goes down the drain.

It has happened before and will likely happen again.

When I upgrade my iPhone it will come with free icloud and I’ll probably use it as a backup for convenience. But the version that’s in the cloud certainly won’t be my only, that’s for sure.

And the second they want to start slapping a charge on it, I’ll have no problem kissing it goodbye.

I don’t think the requests for regular monthly donations is all that new and I haven’t heard of the cloud storage thing. It’s just a high tech premium. If I wasn’t like @Buttonstc and fairly distrustful of cloud storage as I would rather store my own data and not have to trust someone else to keep it safe and secure I would at least prefer free cloud storage to the hundreds of dumb little return address labels, for example, that I get from a lot of charities that solicit donations from me. Though Public radio usually has some tempting premiums, used in generally the same way. The best ones come with the higher pledges or with the commitment of auto paying. And of course charities still accept one time donations. LIke you said, they are trying to regularize their cash flow but they’re not going to turn one time donations away. They count on those too.

the connection is pay-as-you-go. Instead of buying a big computer, programs, utilities, and storage media every several years or months or so and keeping your own data forever as opposed to buying a “small client” home/travel internet processor and paying every time you hear a song, use PhotoShop, download or send email, pay for a purchase, use Word or a spreadsheet, check out a recipe online, make a phone call, video conference? Oh just a little maybe, but ALL THE TIME, EVERYTHING YOU DO, FOREVER. And imagine eventually no other technology available. Unlike good old books, the data will be inaccessible, even from retro service offerers.

Many organizations have been pushing for monthly donations for a number of years. I don’t get the connection to cloud storage either. That seems like a separate issue.

Charities have been trying to get people to give on a regular basis since computerized record keeping became cost effective. People that give regularly feel they have a stake in the charity, they also tend to give more over their lifetimes as someone that only gives a donation at Christmas.

I have been doing this off and on for 25 years.

As far as the charities go, I know that it has always been an option to donate monthly, but only in the last few years has the option been stressed so much—and it seems to coincide with the “news” of cloud computing, and the issues surrounding digital wallets.

It is just in the last few years that charities have started working the internet as hard as they used to work the phones and the mail. Their presence on the world wide web is becoming more common.

I believe that cloud computing is inevitable and the time is rapidly approaching when cloud storage will be safer and more reliable than a room full of disks.

And one will have less control over one’s own data and use of services/software