Hand Your Cause Over to Recipients

Bravo to St. Mary’s/Westside Food Bank Alliance for a mailing that hits its message home on the outer envelope and jolts recipients inside. What’s more, it does so by employing a teaser made up of just two simple images and seven words.

The white No. 10 envelope features a shrunken image of a $1 bill tinted green with the words “100 of These” below it. Next to the dollar bill is a color photograph of a full plate of food with the words “Provide 700 of These!” below it.

There’s a delicate balance when it comes to using a teaser on the outer envelope. You want to get recipients inside by giving them an intriguing taste of your message, but you want to do so without giving away so much that recipients think they have you figured out and decide they’re not interested enough to open the envelope.

But this mailing strikes that balance perfectly. And it does what more and more nonprofits recognize is necessary in this day of greater donor skepticism: It reports where donations are going. “100 of these provide 700 of these.” The numbers are clear, not written in small type.

The reply device continues this theme. Next to each ask level is the number of meals it provides, e.g., “$20 (returned to the community as food for 140 meals); $40 (returned to the community as food for 280 meals).”

The organization reiterates the outer teaser and graphics in the Johnson box area of the two-page, 8.5-inch-by-11-inch letter. It pulls the mailing’s elements together, adding a bit of branding to it, and reminds recipients what it was that brought them into the mailing in the first place.

Timing is a huge factor in this mailing’s potency. Hunger is a compelling cause that’s hard for most people to turn away on an average day, and that’s true to an even larger extent during the holiday season. This mailing by St. Mary’s/Westside Food Bank Alliance does a great job of passing its cause on to recipients.

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