Daniel Rubin: Experts on nonprofits explain mailings game

Say an orangutan-welfare organization asks 100,000 people for $25. Of that mailing, 99 percent of the potential donors will toss the letter. The $25,000 brought in by the 1,000 people who do give won't pay for the mailing, which costs $35,000.

But there's gold in those 1,000 givers. Over the next two years, the orangutan lovers will send them eight more pitches, and the donors will give an additional $20,500. Subtracting the cost of the follow-up letters - less than $4,000 - leaves $16,700 for the ape mission. That's a nice return on investment.

The number of pitches has increased during the last decade as the industry has become more sophisticated about what works, said Eileen Heisman, who runs the National Philanthropic Trust. One of the reasons charities send mail throughout the year is that there are people who give something every time they get pitched, she said. Unlike the Grossmans, most people forget when they last gave.

The fund-raising experts I talked to suggested giving anonymously (unless the donor needs a tax write-off) or using a go-between, such as GlobalGiving or the Network for Good, which help shield your address from solicitors.

UNICEF spokeswoman Lisa Szarkowski explained that steady givers of small amounts like the Grossmans represented "bread and butter" for nonprofits while corporate givers reduced their contributions. Individual donors account for 30 percent of the organization's revenue, Szarkowski said.

Some of the 24 mailings that UNICEF sent to the Grossmans last year were solicitations. Others were thank-yous, tax receipts, and information about greeting cards and catalogs that benefit the charity.

Each one included information about opting out of mail, "because," Szarkowski said, "we don't want to be a nuisance or irrelevant."

When UNICEF read that Ann Grossman felt swamped by mail, it sent another letter, reminding her she can control the mailings, the spokeswoman said. "I hope she opened it."

She didn't.