When writing letters to your donors, your own John Hancock should be bold.
The objective here is to discuss pixelation, not to be confused with pixilation. Of the latter, movie buffs may recall that classic film, Mr Deeds Goes to Town, about the tuba-playing Longfellow Deeds, the Mandrake Falls, Vermont, nouveau philanthropist—courtesy of a 20-million-Great-Depression-dollar inheritance—who is the target of Big City huckstering lawyers trying to get their paws on the boodle.
Mr. Deeds is indifferent to riches, has a soft spot for those down on their luck, and as the story plays out, finds himself in the last act accused of being crazed because of his plan to give away this new-found fortune to destitute farmers. The movie concludes with a courtroom hearing—stuffed with director Frank Capra’s cluster of justice-seeking, cheering, interrupting everymen—in which Mr. Deeds is accused by his neighbors, the spinster oddball Faulkner Sisters, of being pixilated.
Meaning? Affected, odd—like . . . pixies.
Which are not pixels.
Let us focus on the latter briefly, and their occasional emergence in thank-you letters, and specifically on that thing which adorns these letters’ conclusion: the signature of the appreciative and grateful nonprofit CEO, executive director, or development officer.
In these Philanthropy Daily environs, where all sorts of charitable matters are discussed and the ways of nonprofits are coached, we should admit that thank-you letters are the rule, although there are exceptions. Yep, there exist organizations, recipients of charitable donations and widows’ mites, that fail to send such in response to donations. That lecture for another day.
Most nonprofits do, however, offer thanks. True, some organizations, strapped by bandwidth dearths, are slow to express gratitude via paper and postage. But giving credit where due, at some point these beneficiaries of charity and largesse surmount their institutional procrastinating by having some intern tag-team the office printer and computer to generate mail-merged letters of appreciation (sometimes with the salutation for high-end donors even personalized by the CEO: “Dear Mr. and Mrs. Smith Jim and Dottie”) where typically image-generated scrawl—distant cousin of the auto-pen—completes the “Yours Truly.”
The end having been reached, the praise spent, exhausted, the important stuff already conveyed, one should treat the signature as a minor component of the letter, no?
No.
Like with the screwy salutations (“Dear Mr. and Mr. Smith”) or other errors (“Manchester, NH 3101”) and irregularities (“dEAR tOM AND sAUNDRA”) that can find their mischief-causing way into missives of gratitude, thereby making obvious the automation of the thanking-you process, a less-than-perfect signature—now really, how difficult is a “perfect” signature to pull off?—can, like the sore thumb, stand out, diminish the grazia, stink of the pro-forma, render its donor recipient . . . pixilated.
As Americans, we should be particularly attuned to, and observant and respectful of, signatures. Our nation’s instigating document, the Declaration of Independence, famously boasts one so big, bold, legible, audacious, flourished that John Hancock, president of the Second Continental Congress and supersized scrawler, allegedly explained, the King of England would be able to read without spectacles. It made emphatic all which preceded it.
Signatures can convey so much—even revolution!—that their use, no matter the context, should avoid the haphazard and the low-quality, and seek most definitely to not present the piece, and its alleged appreciation, as an afterthought.
About which: The mailman recently delivered a nonprofit’s thank-you. The letter, standard enough in its language of appreciation, came a smidge distant from the actual donation date. No demerits for that—after all, the charity did what good manners require, likely despite being beleaguered by too-few man hours. Before the missive was tossed onto the desk, something caught attention and drew the eye: its signature.
This thank-you note was not hand-signed, but bore an image, printed under the “Yours Truly,” of a cursive blue signature. It was pixelated. Unclear. Also, a bit small, shrunken, un-Hancockian. And the signature, obvious in a rectangle image, attended a shadowed background, a grayish benday, that stood out, ever so slightly, but not slightly enough, against the white of the paper.
It hearkened to that term, “good enough.” But in the practice of offering thanks, good enough is never . . . good enough.
Has a mountain been made out of this molehill? Perhaps, although that’s not the objective. So then what is the objective of this bellyache?
It’s this: If you are going to send someone an automated thank-you letter in response to a generous gift, and any gift is a generous gift, make sure your signature—that’s the YOU of the communication—looks amazing. Don’t be a schlub designated via a weak autograph: Aspire to be dressed up, to the nines, ready for the black-tie gala, clean-shaven, breath minty fresh, gown unwrinkled, handbag matching, stockings (are they still worn?) sans tear, nails done, shoes polished, spit-shined even, heading out in a carriage instead of a pumpkin, oozing class.
The donor—some of whom even read and look at your letter, and who can and do get pixilated by pixelations, and the lack of attentiveness they project—deserves better than good enough.
The conclusion: Check the thank-you letters your nonprofit mails to donors. If you have a cheesy, grainy, automated signature, fix it. If you claim techno-clod status, and can’t, then maybe ask a kindergartener.
Bonus conclusion: Do watch Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. The movie has much to say about philanthropy, the spirit of generosity and localism, and it maybe even makes an unintended case against the perpetuity of foundations.
Signing off.
