2011 Fundraiser/thank you letter
One of our plans for this fundraiser was to write to donors with an old-fashioned, posted letter a few weeks after they make their donation. Why are we doing this, rather than just sending them emails? Well, there are two reasons...
- In a letter we can explain a bit more about what Wikimedia UK does and how we do it, particularly if we include a leaflet. So we can help a donor who gives money to "Wikipedia" understand more about our work and the cool things we do.
- We also want to get donors who haven't already done so to a) fill in a Gift Aid declaration and b) set up a regular Direct Debit. We are much more likely (c.10x) to get a response via the post than via email. Wikimedia Deutschland did something like this to follow up the 2010 Fundraiser, and found that the extra income they received more than covered the costs of sending the mailing - we hope the same will be the case here.
On December 5th we wrote to about 5,000 donors who had given PayPal donations in October and November (i.e. the testing period and the start of the Fundraiser). We didn't write to people who had already set up Direct Debits, as there is no point asking them to set up another one.
The results as at 28th December are available here. The mailing as a whole has raised a bit more than what we spent on it (though some more responses are likely to come in in the next few weeks). However, the people who had donated £20 or more were much more likely to respond than people who donated less than £20.
The mailing we sent is below:
