Fighting through the junk mail
I spent part of my afternoon sifting through the pile of junk mail I receive every week. There were offers from magazines and banks and credit card companies. There were offers from cable and satellite companies. And there were requests from charities of every size, shape and description.
I’ll keep trying to keep things simple…
I go through it all. It consumes about an hour every week. I could, I suppose, not bother opening the envelopes and just throw everything that is not a bill in the recycling bin, but sometimes there is a nickel or a dime or a couple of pennies in the envelope and–having been raised by a child of the depression–I can’t bring myself to throw away money. The coins–16 cents today–go into a jar and eventually turn into a donation to Relay for Life. And there are nice cards, envelopes, or address labels in others. Sometimes there is a notepad. I use those as well and take the money I save and put it into one of the charities I support. It is currently calendar season and by November I will have enough of those to give one to almost everyone I know.
The evolution of charitable junk mail
There was one particularly thick piece of junk mail today. It included the usual well-written letter designed to pluck sympathy from the coldest stone, five nice greeting cards with matching envelopes, a sheet of matching address labels, a matching notepad, a list of reasons why to support them and not one of their equally eloquent rivals, and a return envelope for your donation.
There is an absolute torrent of mail out there…
I am old enough to remember a time when a mailing from a charity included nothing more than a letter asking for your help and a stamped reply envelope. But then I also remember a time when it did not take an hour or more a week to go through the mail to sift out the nuggets that meant something: birthday cards, letters from friends, magazines…
The irony of my situation
There is, of course, a great deal of irony in me writing this. As chairman of Walking with Jane, I periodically find myself adding to the flow of junk mail entering people’s houses. I try to keep the package simple: a letter, a return envelope, and a response form.
My personal philosophy on fundraising is pretty simple…
I’ve tried added inducements twice. Last year I offered people who donated $100 or more a t-shirt. It made no positive difference. People who were going to give $100 did. The shirt did not cause anyone to up their contribution. The offer made some people angry–they wanted the money to go to the cause, not to producing or mailing the shirts.
Why we are trying another inducement
Currently, we are offering people who donate $10 or more six chances to get a one-of-a-kind quilt a former student made for us. I’m hoping this will get more people to donate–though beating our 25 percent reply rate over our last two direct mail campaigns may prove a stiff test.
…what we are trying to do: get the word out about NET cancer and its symptoms.
Increasing the size of the donor base is important to me not because it will result in a huge increase in fundraising–though that would be nice– but because it will mean more people are interacting with another important part of what we are trying to do: get the word out about NET cancer and its symptoms.
Educating people about NET cancer matters
We send out a pamphlet on the most common type of NET cancer with every thank you note for every donation–regardless of size. My hope is people will read it, recognize the symptoms in themselves or someone they know, share it with friends and co-workers–maybe even post it in their workplace. There are potentially three million people in America who have NET cancer and will never know they have it. It will kill them–but they’ll be told it was something else that did the deed.
There is…a great deal of irony in me writing this.
My personal philosophy on fundraising is pretty simple: supply people with what they need to make a rational decision. Gifts in the initial mailing won’t do that. Gifts for donations probably won’t either.
Junk mail and the bottom line
But I understand why the various charities do those things. There is an absolute torrent of mail out there and somehow you have to separate your charity from everyone else’s. If one group has success in increasing donations with mailing labels, everyone else has to match that–or beat it–or so the prevailing wisdom goes.
I am old enough to remember a time when a mailing from a charity included nothing more than a letter asking for your help…
Yet money spent on mailing labels, note pads and greeting cards is money that can’t be spent on the cause you are working for.
Keeping things simple
Emily Brinkmeyer-Kraus made our quilt. She donated the materials, her design time and her labor. She even shipped it here herself. To the extent other charities have similar arrangements with the suppliers of their inducements, I won’t complain. But I don’t know how those things work for them.
I can’t bring myself to throw away money.
Meanwhile, I’ll keep trying to keep things simple: two fundraising mailings a year, I’ll put the stamps on in both directions, and I won’t share your name with any other organization.
