April 21, 2010 | Read Time: 2 minutes
A few days ago, I received an odd direct-mail solicitation from St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, in Memphis.
When a friend asked me to make a donation to the hospital to honor the memory of a child who had died, I dutifully mailed in a small check. Now, more than a year later, St. Jude sent an appeal for another gift.
But the charity’s letter raises questions. First: Why am I only now receiving a letter dated February 24, nearly two months ago? And more important: Why did the hospital ask me to give $0 on its donation-return slip (shown above.)
It made the mistake on the appeal itself two more times:
“Please rush your tax-deductible renewal gift of $0, $0, or even $0 to St. Jude today and give a child a second chance at life,” the appeal reads.
When I called St. Jude to ask about the letter, a spokeswoman said that the company it hired to produce and mail its solicitations made a mistake on 3 percent of the letters in a recent batch of fund-raising mail. After the hospital was notified of the error last month, the spokeswoman said, the direct-mail company reimbursed the charity for the mail pieces with the $0 mistake and added a new quality-control step to avoid more errors.
St. Jude doesn’t plan to make any effort to notify people who received the mistake-riddled appeal. “While St. Jude would have liked to notify impacted donors of this error, all notification options would have resulted in a net loss in revenue,” wrote Jessica Lukens, a St. Jude public-relations specialist, in an e-mail response.
What would you have done about this mistake? How can charities keep donors motivated to give in response to direct mail when they receive outdated or sloppy materials?
Let us know your thoughts by clicking on the comment link below.
