"Only" was a gross exaggeration. I'm not sure why I typed it.

I think my examples are pretty typical though. Charitable people get lobbied by people who want charity. This occurs with both personal and extended charity. In my case it gets me bugged into spending more time on other people's technical problems (e.g. open-source software projects) than I'd like.

I haven't contributed to many charities, but the ones I have seem to have put me on mailing and call lists. I also once contributed to a political candidate for his anti-war stance, and have been rewarded with political spam ever since. I'm not into politics at all so its rather unwelcome.