Dozens of people have complained to our local agency, Multiple Sclerosis Community Services about what they say have been aggressive money raising telephone calls.

The problem: The agency didn't make them. 

"We never do any telemarketing," said Mrs. Connie Ciccarelli, Executive Director of the nonprofit organization, which provides services locally to people with multiple sclerosis, a degenerative disease of the central nervous system. 
At least 45 people have called to complain about rude treatment by solicitors who claim to be raising money for multiple sclerosis, Ciccarelli said. 

In the telephone solicitations, which have blanketed the Salinas area during the past three weeks, callers don't specify an organization, saying only that part of the money will be spent locally, Ciccarelli said.

When pressed for details, the solicitors become impolite, sometimes even hanging up, according to the complaints, she said.
"The calls are almost harassing, they're so rude," said Barbara Sanchez, vice president of the local organization.
Since the solicitors never identify the organization they represent, people don't know where to direct their complaints.  "People look under 'multiple sclerosis' in the phone book and see us," Sanchez said. 

One solicitor called Jean Hontalas, president of the local group.
"She said that something like 30 percent of the money comes back to the local area," Hontalas said. But, she said, no local programs she knows of receive money raised in this fashion. 
Ciccarelli, who has fielded a number of the complaints, called the implication that donations would be spent locally "misleading."
"That concerns me a great deal," she said. 

The calls have been made on behalf of the Multiple Sclerosis Foundation Inc. in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Sanchez said.

Jules Kuperberg, administrator of financial resources with the Florida organization, said many groups like his use telephone money-raising. Kuperberg couldn't say whether his foundation currently is soliciting in the Salinas area.
"We approach the public because the public does not always come to us", he said.

Kuperberg's organization distributes money nationwide, but he said telephone solicitors aren't supposed to indicate how much money will go to any particular region.
Ciccarelli said she urges people who receive telephone requests for donations to ask who the money is for and where it's going.
People who don't wish to receive telephone solicitations should ask callers to take their name off the phone lists, Kuperberg said.

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