Sanky Blog

By Judy Maneval

In the last few years, we have seen a remarkable – in some cases a huge – increase in the volume of contributions that arrive as “white mail” – or gifts that cannot be attributed to specific appeals. For some organizations, this increase has not affected giving coded to individual appeals. For others, there appears to be a decline in coded gifts as the white mail line has increased.

A number of possible explanations for this interesting phenomenon occur to us, including one suggestion that donors think they will not be re-solicited if they use their own envelope.

We believe that the most likely explanation, however, is the increasing donor traffic between off-line mailings and online reading. Some are direct mail donors receiving appeals and then going online for more information. We speculate that they don’t retain the mailing pieces, but simply respond in their own envelopes. And, at the same time, there are people not on our donor or prospect lists who are finding our organizations online. Then those who are not comfortable giving credit card information online are sending checks in plain envelopes.

Let us know if you are seeing this same trend and if you can suggest other reasons.