What an utterly bizarre thread this has turned into. Is no one surprised that sometimes people over-promise and under-deliver? Too many people here have developed a romanticised notion of the protagonist and what we're experiencing here is the shattering of that illusion.

When it comes to giving to charity, give because you want to help the end recipients money, not because you're getting some bit of tat in return.

Edit - I was doing mail-merge with email nearly 20 years ago - no it's not that hard. I also recall coding a shell script to batch send using sendmail in intervals of 100 so that the company's internet connection would not get flooded. There's always a work around to a problem if the will is there.