Seasonal letters
Christmas messages for donors
A Christmas letter to donors arrives in the same week as the end of year appeal from four other charities, and it is far more effective if it is clearly not one of them. Send a card that asks for nothing in December and the appeal in a different month. Donors notice which charities only write when they want money.
Written by Autopen Australia · Updated
Thanks with one concrete image
[FIRST NAME],
Because of people who gave this year, [CONCRETE THING] happened in [MONTH]. Not a projection and not a target - it happened, and you were part of it.
Nothing enclosed and nothing asked for. Just thank you, and I hope your Christmas is a good one.
[NAME], [ORGANISATION]
To long-standing supporters
[FIRST NAME],
[NUMBER] years of support from you now. Organisations like ours survive on exactly that and we do not say so often enough.
No ask in this one. Have a lovely Christmas.
[NAME], [ORGANISATION]
Where the year was difficult
Donors can tell when a charity is glossing. Saying it plainly builds more trust than a good-news card would.
[FIRST NAME],
A hard year, honestly. [DIFFICULTY] took more than we expected and some of what we planned did not happen.
What did happen, happened because of people who kept giving through it. Thank you for being one of them. I will write properly in [MONTH] about the year ahead.
[NAME], [ORGANISATION]
To somebody who gave for the first time this year
The highest-value card in the run. First-year attrition is where most supporter files leak, and a December card that asks for nothing is the cheapest thing that reduces it.
[FIRST NAME],
You gave to us for the first time this year, which means this is the first of these you have had from me.
No ask in it, and there will not be one in December. Thank you for starting, and I hope the break is a good one.
[NAME], [ORGANISATION]
Getting it right
- What to mention. What the year achieved, in one concrete image rather than a figure. Thanks that does not reference the amount. A wish that is about them rather than about the cause.
- What to leave out. A donation form inside the Christmas card. "As the year draws to a close" and every variant of it. Describing need at Christmas in a way that is designed to be difficult to put down.
- How long. 40 to 90 words.
- How personal. Warm and unhurried. The absence of an ask is the message.
Personalising more than a handful
The fields that earn their place here: [FIRST NAME], [ORGANISATION], [NUMBER], [MONTH].
Suppress the deceased and the bereaved before a Christmas run. Every charity database carries both flags and a Christmas card addressed to someone who died in September is the single worst mailing error a charity can make.
Before any run, read the piece with the longest value in your data, the shortest, and the empty one. If all three read as English the merge is sound. Personalising direct mail at scale covers the rest.
Sending these at volume
A supporter file of several thousand is not a card-writing job for a small fundraising team in December, which is why the December card so often becomes the December appeal instead.
Autopen Australia writes each piece individually with a real ballpoint, personalises every piece from your list, written into the sentence rather than dropped into a gap, hand-addresses the envelopes, inserts, collates and seals and lodges the run with Australia Post, or sends it back to you to release in waves.
Want a December card that is not an appeal? How charity runs work
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Writing more of these than you have evenings
Tell us roughly how many and what they say. We will come back with an exact price and a production window.