At Donor Power Blog, Jeff Brooks is less than impressed with a Charity Navigator video advising donors fed up with too many direct-mail appeals to “take matters into their own hands,” but he warns fund raisers that the sentiment is one they have to deal with head-on.

Charity Navigator’s YouTube video offers irritated donors five tips on how to stop charities from sending them unwanted mail, which include: refrain from giving small donations to many charities, and “if all else fails,” give anonymously through Web sites like Network for Good.

“It’s more than a little irresponsible for Charity Navigator to buy into the myth that fund raising is a form of harassment,” writes Mr. Brooks. But, he says, fund raisers need to get used to the idea that donors are increasingly finding ways to block out their appeals.

With that in mind, Mr. Brooks, the creative director of Merkle, a marketing agency that serves nonprofit groups, offers a few recommendations of his own:

Don’t let a few complainers dictate your fund raising, he says. “When you put the number of complaints an appeal generates against its number of gifts, you’ll usually find gifts outnumbering complaints by a factor of multiple thousands.”

But if donors want less mail, “give them what they want” and quickly too, he writes. “This is how you can either keep them as donors or stop wasting money on them.”

Mr. Brooks also recommends giving donors the chance to determine how often they hear from you before they get annoyed. And, he says, make sure your message and cause are relevant to those you’re soliciting.

“If your communication comes across as a stream of harassing appeals, you have a relevance problem,” says Mr. Brooks. “It’s time to rethink how you win people to your cause and motivate them to give.”

What do you think of Charity Navigator’s video? And what does your organization do to try to avoid annoying donors with too many solicitations?