I'm partial to the NRA, and after 15 years of annual dues I went to Life Member, now past the break-even point on the cost.
Read my signature. I don't think comparing an NRA general membership to an SAF donation makes any sense as the money goes to TOTALLY different things. NRA is actually more like IPDA, ATA, etc., IMO. NRA is organized as an educational non-profit. As such they have a lot of restrictions on how they can spend their money politically(they basically can't). You can call their member services line and ask about where the membership fees go. If you like the magazine and other things it may still be worth your while though.
I'd say your main choices, given what you seem to want to do, are NRA-ILA, NRA-PVF, or SAF for national organizations. There are also a few minority organizations which offer a good lobbying angle that are worthy of support such as JPFO.
I donate to SAF primarily. For one thing, I think NRA-ILA & NRA-PVF are probably past the point of diminishing returns as far as donations and the seemingly much smaller/leaner SAF probably has a ways to go. A few years ago I received almost no junk-mail from SAF. Now I receive something about once a month. It is usually a thinly veiled request for money. Sometimes a little worthwhile information is included, but a request for money is always there. I took a "free" membership with NRA a few years ago, and I received almost weekly junk mail for several years despite several requests to stop it. It only stopped after I got into it with a regional NRA person. He claimed I was lying and I produced copies of e-mail requests sent to NRA. I can't say it was related, but the flow stopped pretty quickly after that. I still get e-mail although that doesn't bother me as as it costs almost nothing and it doesn't waste paper. I may not have ever requested for the e-mails to stop.
I'm not sure how NRA handles a life membership, but my guess is they receive less money than if they received yearly payments. It is a "deal" not a larger gift. If they were to purchase an instant annuity with the $300 a life membership is often available for I don't see how they can get the cost of membership as a return in addition to inflation, especially right now. If you pay the full $1000 then they probably do quite well though. If they use the money immediately assuming there will be more memberships the following year that probably doesn't work well for them in the long run. Of course, most people are going to forget to send the check every once in a while or quit totally after a few years, and if that is the case they probably get more from a life membership. If you just pay every year on time they probably get more money from the yearly membership.
