Most Charities Are Careful About Their Mail Appeals

To the Editor:

Is The Chronicle of Philanthropy so desperate for editorial content that the article “Paper Chase” (October 4) is the best you can do to creatively initiate even more debate about charitable solicitations via direct mail?

Worse yet, could you be prompting even more states to seek legislation that consumers be allowed, or even encouraged, to “opt in” to mailing lists so their mailboxes won’t be overwhelmed or their letter carriers burdened with heavy mail sacks?

Of course, some states wisely have realized that a trinity of Supreme Court cases protects charity free speech, and thus such “opt in” laws are unconstitutional. Yet a few states continue to push this idea forward.

I’m more concerned that your article does not give any comment from spokespersons for the charitable mailing industry (most notably missing is response from the Direct Marketing Association Nonprofit Federation). Instead, readers were entertained with a cute feature article written in the tone of a small-town newspaper featuring someone’s indignant grandfather. (And his indignation is certainly well placed.)

I know of hundreds of national and probably thousands of local direct-mail charity campaigns that aim to offer good donor service, including prompt honoring of requests to opt out of mailing lists and subsequent campaigns. In the charities I manage (in six countries, all of them intense in direct marketing), donor relations are taken seriously, not only because we don’t want to offend people or promote adverse media attention, but also because it is good stewardship of time and money. What sense is there in mailing to people who I already know won’t give? It does nothing to meet the primary goal of charitable direct marketing within given legal and ethical limits: maximum net profit for program.

We are also one of the few national charities with direct-marketing campaigns that publicly offer a “no questions asked” refund on any monetary gift within a specified time limit, provided the donor’s check has cleared. Many charities do this as routine policy, but few make that opportunity well-known to the public. And we do get a few folks asking for refunds because we “mail them too much.” But the numbers are negligible.

On the other hand, for several years we have tracked donors who have asked to be mailed once a year, and at the time they specify. We honor those requests, and are met with dismaying failure. While those folks almost unfailingly promise to give (and give generously) if we’d only mail them once, no more than 10 percent follow up on that promise to our first annualized solicitation to them. Percentages are higher for those who request quarterly or semiannual mailings, but I’d suspect primarily because we have been able to keep our brand, our campaigns, and “our face” in front of donors overwhelmed by a market of competing voices. Marketing forces, donor interests, and human nature combine to make annual gift solicitations something we do for a limited number of higher-end segments, but with little expectation of response. The others, we put into our “kill file” and try not to intrude again on their lives.

We also offer our donors a semiannual tick box so they can “opt out” of either our mailings or our rental and swaps program. Our offer is easy to find, printed in 100 percent black ink, and we’ll even pay the return postage.

Lastly, more than a few are frustrated enough with irresponsible direct marketers that they return our mailings to us, with handwritten announcements of “moved away, no forwarding,” or even more serious, “dead.”

We take such communications seriously, to the extent that we send each bereaved family a short letter thanking them for the loved one’s support, offering to promptly help in any tax situations for closing out the estate. Many families respond with thanks (and often with surprise that anyone would care, a sad indictment in itself).

I hope The Chronicle will be able to give the Direct Marketing Association and other direct-marketing fund raisers a better, balanced voice to the sort of complaints raised in the article about Bernard Olson’s postal hobby.

Joel MacCollam
Chief Executive
World Emergency Relief
Carlsbad, Calif.