I’ll get my personal politics out of the way first: I’m a firm believer in stating the reason for the season.  I hate, because of stupid political correctness, to not be able to say things like “Merry Saturnalia,” hold my feast of Natalis Invicti and my Zarahosht No-Diso festival, or publicly display my Festivus pole.

The point I’m (poorly) trying to make is that people believe all sorts of things.  All donors are people.  That means, according to my Idiot’s Guide to Syllogisms, donors believe all sorts of things.

This all comes to a head in December.  To be sure, different cultures and beliefs have holidays and observances throughout the year.  But December is the main time when these observations come to the forefront.  Some observers requesting their observances be observed as the default by all. Others request not to be confronted by the same.

This impacts fundraising.  After all, people who are religious tend to donate and more often.  So even if your charity is wholly secular, you have people of faith on your list and likely a disproportionate number (and depth of faith) to the general population.  As with all demographic variables, there are wide swings from organization to organization and person to person, so this is just on average.

I remember in my salad days sending out cards as a premium toward the end of the year.  Of the six, four or five (my memory fails me) were general holiday cards and one or two were specific Christmas cards.  I had thought this Solomonic compromise would quell donor feelings on the issue.  On the contrary, my only solstice solace was that we had approximately equal numbers of people saying they would never donate again because they got a Christmas card in their bunch and people saying they would never donate again because they got a general holiday card in their bunch.

At that time, I shook my head.  What are you going to do?  You can’t please them all.  Sigh.

What if you could?

After all, we are direct marketers, not mass marketers.  According to the Bureau of Made-Up Statistics, seven percent of American TV commercials have the message “buy this truck that goes over rocks like this: bbbbbbrrrooooom!”  That’s mass marketing.  It only wins because it fights dirty and some of its practitioners’ knuckles are closer to the ground.  We direct marketers don’t have to go by lowest common denominator; we can go by actual common denominations.

But, you say (because you are quite bright), even within denominations there’s going to be a variety of viewpoints on how to address various holidays.  After all, there are many people who identify culturally or even ethnically with a religious group without believing every jot and tittle of that religion’s tenets.  And people observe in different ways.  The Puritans of colonial New England, for example, banned the observance of Christmas because they felt its traditions of tree decoration and gift giving were paganist.  Thus, you could send someone a Christmas card who identifies as Christian and they could think you were a heathen.

Thus, even in a place were a demographic variable should be predictive, donor preference is better.

In other words, ask your donors what they would like.

OK, I know that’s scary to ask explicit.  All the true believer wings of all the sides of this debate will come out in force, just as if you had mailed them the wrong card.

But what about an implicit question?

I can tell you what I wish I’d done lo those many moons ago.  I wish I’d asked donors to pick what cards they would receive, saying that sometimes people want different cards for different friends and family members.  Donors would get the right cards (and probably donate more), non-donors would have an opportunity to request cards (with a donation, of course), and I would have 80% fewer angry phone calls.

We have the power of direct marketing.  Let’s use it for good – the good of not offending and getting yelled at by our donors.

Nick