[Foundation-l] Fundraising ideas - bursting the bubble

[Mauro Barbolini]

Stop writing to me !
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Anthony DiPierro" <wikilegal at inbox.org>
To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
Sent: Wednesday, June 14, 2006 2:37 PM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Fundraising ideas - bursting the bubble


> On 6/14/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> > > Of course, if you have the person's address, I agree the point is
> > > rather moot.  Even if it costs $1 to send a letter to someone donating
> > > $250, that's only four tenths of one percent.    Email would be more
> > > useful if there are donors making that size donation who don't want to
> > > release their address.
> > >
> > > I suppose it might cost more than $1 to send a letter outside the
> > > United States, but then again how many people living outside the
> > > United States donate more than $250 to Wikimedia and then file a US
> > > tax return where they itemize deductions?  Probably 0.
> > >
> > > Anthony
> > How,
> > I do not know how you arrive at that $1. It typically is substantially
> > more. It is not only postage, you are sending something that is printed,
> > there is the handling, there is a certain percentage that returns. You
> > do want to maintain your database and register those RTS. You then have
> > to consider how to follow up, do you want to find out what is wrong with
> > the address. On average it costs over $5 to handle a RTS.
>
> I don't know how you arrive at $5, but that's only for letters that
> are returned to the sender.  What about the others, and what
> percentage is generally returned to the sender?
>
> And what if you just want to ignore those letters that are returned to
> the sender?
>
> Let's think about 1000 letters.  High quality business paper should be
> less than $50.  Add $50 more for toner.  Envelopes are $10.  Labels
> are $10.  A paper folder is $100 (should last a lot longer than 1000
> letters, though).  That makes $220 to produce the letters.  Add in
> $390 for postage, which assumes you don't have the volume to send at
> the nonprofit rate.  Now let's assume you can't get volunteer labor,
> which is probably untrue considering there are probably enough
> Wikipedians just in the Tampa Bay area willing to help.  At 50 letters
> an hour (slow) and $10/hour (expensive) that's $200.  Comes out to
> $810, so at that volume with those assumptions we're still under
> $1/letter with about 20% to spare.
>
> If volume goes down price goes up, but take the volume under 500
> letters or so and it's something Danny could do by himself in a couple
> days.
>
> Now I assume the foundation already has a decent laser printer.  Am I
> wrong here?  And I was neglecting the cost of keeping the database,
> because that's something that has to be done anyway.
>
> > When you do
> > not handle this well, you get yourself on the wrong side of
> > organisations that monitor charities that ask for money. This can cost
> > you your license in the first place but worse, it can give a
> > organisation a bad name.
> >
> What license is going to be lost by making what types of mistakes?
>
> > Once you decide to do professional marketing, you have to ensure that
> > you maintain your database. This should mean that you commit to doing it
> > well. The benefits can be huge and given our brand recognition it is
> > likely to be huge. But please do this well or do not do it all.
> > Thanks,
> >      GerardM
>
> I wasn't talking about professional marketing, I was talking about the
> cost to send letters to people who donated at least $250.
>
> If it really does cost $5/letter, you could always tell people to
> include an extra $5 if they want a written confirmation letter.  But I
> don't see where you're getting this figure.
>
> Anthony
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