Twenty Postal Strike Survival Tips for Charities and Non-Profits

By Alan Sharpe, CFRE
What should you do if your charity raises money through the mail but your country’s postal workers are about to strike, or are already on strike?

Naturally, you’re troubled.

Most charities in Canada that are not places of worship raise a substantial portion of their operating budget using fundraising letters. Many charities also rely on the mail to recruit new donors, keep their donors up to date with newsletters, invite donors to special events, conduct donor surveys, and issue charitable tax receipts and thank-you letters. So a strike by postal workers isn’t just an inconvenience. It threatens a charity’s very existence.

Here are some ways to survive a postal strike.

1. In the weeks before the postal workers go on strike, write to your donors. Tell them that a strike is imminent, and give the anticipated strike date if possible.
2. Describe how the strike will affect your donors’ ability to communicate with you, and your ability to communicate with your donors, by mail.
3. Warn your donors to expect delays in receiving their gift acknowledgement letters, since their mail gifts, and you thank-you letters, will likely be delayed in the mail system.
4. If the labour action involves rotating strikes in cities across the country rather than a nationwide general strike, warn your donors to still expect delays, since the location and duration of each strike is unpredictable.
5. Give your donors a way to keep current on the status of the strike by showing them where to sign up for email bulletins, text alerts and media releases issued by the postal labour union and the postal service. Direct donors to the websites of each party in the strike.
6. Encourage your donors to make their donations using other methods, such as email, phone, online, text and in person.
7. Before the strike begins, make contingency plans for sending your appeals by email, provided you have the technical ability and sufficient email addresses to do so profitably.
8. If you are going to solicit gifts during the strike by email, write to donors whose email addresses you do not have on file, and invite them to give you their email addresses. Give donors an incentive, such as a gift certificate, for doing so (you’ll acquire more addresses this way).
9. If you anticipate that the strike will be prolonged, consider phoning your high-value donors and asking for a gift. Mention the impact of the strike and encourage them to either phone your charity or give online. Do this throughout the duration of the strike.
10. If you anticipate that the strike will be prolonged, write to your donors before the strike and invite them to join your monthly giving program. If some are reluctant, invite them to give a gift each month, however small, for the duration of the strike only. Stress your need for daily funds to continue helping the people you serve.
11. Before the strike begins, invite your most frequent and generous donors to mail you a series of post-dated cheques.
12. Before the strike begins, invite your donors to add your charity as an Internet banking payee so that they can donate to your cause when they pay their bills online.
13. Ramp up your homepage so that it makes a clear, compelling request for donations (perhaps even mentioning your inability to receive donations in the mail, and stressing the need for visitors to donate online or by phone instead).
14. Revise your Twitter homepage so that it stresses your need for funds during the strike, and then solicit donations in some of your tweets.
15. Post a provocative, viral video on YouTube that shows the predicament your charity will be in if you stop receiving gifts during the postal strike. Make a strong request for funds, and direct viewers to your donation page, or even better, to a special landing page dedicated to the strike.
16. Post regular status updates to your Facebook page so that your fans, friends, donors, advocates, members and everyone else is reminded regularly of your need for funds.
17. While the strike is on, email your gift acknowledgement letters, charitable gift receipts, newsletters and special event invitations.
18. If your charity has to cancel a fundraising event because of the postal strike, host the event online instead as a creative, fun, tongue-in-cheek non-event. (“Our Black Tie Non-Event will NOT take place on (date). Cocktails will NOT be served at 5:30 p.m. Dinner will NOT be served at 7 p.m. NO program will be held at 8:30 p.m.)
19. When the strike is over, and you have a backlog of gift acknowledgement letters to mail, mention in each letter that you are sorry for the delay in thanking the donor.
20. When the strike is over, don’t be tempted to persuade as many donors as possible to start giving online instead of by mail. The majority of today’s donors prefer the mail. Gifts made by email and online still make up less than 10% of the revenue for most charities in North America.