#102 Blogpost - Tuesday, July 21, 2020
The Farkas Chain Letter Fracas:
Fundraising
at Its Most Elegant
In April, 1997 came the following letter from our friend Jon Saunders,
creative director at Bozell Worldwide, Inc., on Bozell letterhead:
Mr. & Mrs. Dennison Hatch
310 Gaskill Street
Philadelphia, PA 19147
Dear Peggy & Denny,
I have been asked to help raise at least $500,000 to
assist the Home Care Program/Memorial Sloan Kettering Center in completing its
endowment.
The Home Care Program cares for homebound people
living with catastrophic illness. It
offers psychological symptom control, without charge to them and their
families/significant others. Care is available 24 hours a day, 365 days a
year. The interest from this endowment
will enable the Program to secure the services of a home care nurse. The more money raised, the greater the number
of people whose needs will be met in a compassionate and professional manner.
In order to help reach this goal, we ask that you
kindly do the following:
1. Please
forward a check for $10 (no more) made payable to “The Home Care Program,
MSKC”, c/o (Physician in Charge), MD, 1275 York Avenue, New York, NY 10021.
2. Please,
retype this letter on your letterhead and send it to ten friends or individuals
in your company or organization whom you know personally and know will be able
to help. With your letter, please send
the names of those who received it along with the enclosed list of recipients
to date.
All contributions are fully tax deductible. No goods or services have been offered or
received by you in consideration of your gift.
Thanks for joining me in supporting this worthwhile endeavor.
Best regards,
/s/ Jon
Enc.
It
started small.
Carol Garner Farkas (1945-2019) was not your professional
fundraiser. A practicing Psychiatric Nurse Clinician for over 20 years in
New York City and Westchester County and a 19-year volunteer at Memorial Sloan
Kettering Cancer Center, she was married to the former president of Alexander’s
Department Stores.
With no fanfare she sent the simple one-page letter above
to 24 couples—friends on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. “I didn’t ask
permission,” she told Elizabeth Bumiller of The
New York Times. “I just did it.”
According to Bumiller’s April 3, 1997, story in The
New York Times, the letters crisscrossed the top echelons of business,
law and entertainment nationwide; contributions came in from the likes of
Elizabeth Taylor, Carrie Fisher, Gregory Peck and Lauren Bacall. Not only did Lauren Bacall send in $10, but
also she sent the letter off to the Sidney Lumets, the Arthur Schlesingers, the
Tony Waltons (a top Broadway set designer who was formerly married to Julie
Andrews), Betty Comden and Adolph Green and the Mike Nichols (she is Diane
Sawyer).
Mike
Nichols, in turn, sent the letter to Elaine May, Steve Martin, Whoopi
Goldberg and Frank Langella, Pete Peterson (investment banker), Joan
Ganz Cooney (founder of Sesame Workshop), Nora Ephron and Nick Pileggi
(author of Goodfellas).
And so it went.
Never mind that the mailing brought in over 14,000 checks for a total of $251,000 for Sloan Kettering. According to the Times,
the folks at Memorial Sloan Kettering treated Mrs. Farkas (wife of the
former chairman of Alexander's department stores) like a pariah.
The Times headline:
PUSHING THE ENVELOPE OF FUND-RAISING
Volunteer's Chain Letter Embarrasses a Hospital.
From the Times Story:
“Indeed,
Sloan-Kettering is treating Mrs. Farkas, the wife of Robin L. Farkas, the
former Alexander's chairman, as if she deserved quarantine.
“The hospital has asked her not to speak to the press and has
distanced itself from a chain letter that officials said privately they
considered tasteless and unbecoming to Sloan-Kettering's reputation (although
the hospital is keeping the money the letter has raised).
'This is not a letter that was started by or sanctioned by the
institution,'' said Avice A. Meehan, the hospital's spokeswoman. ''I think chain
letters in general raise questions on the part of the U.S. Postal Service.
“Sloan-Kettering officials said that they had been inundated so
far with 14,539 checks from the chain letter. In December and January, the
checks arrived at a rate of 200 a week, and 50 to 100 a week continue to
arrive. Hospital officials estimated the processing cost at $2 to $2.50 per
check, and said each contributor receives a thank-you note as part of hospital
policy.”
While neither Sloan-Kettering’s president nor director of
fund raising, Alexander H. Chute, would comment to The Times on the promotion, a hospital spokeswoman said: “I think chain
letters in general raise questions on the part of the U.S. Postal Service.”
I spoke by phone to Alexander Chute, who reported that this
letter “has been investigated by everybody and has been found to be totally
clean. We have done nothing to encourage a thing; at the same time we couldn’t
stop it.”
It
is emphatically not a chain letter, because it doesn't promise the
sender a jackpot, nor does it require a fee. Yet Cheryl Bell of the
Metropolitan New York Better Business Bureau pompously proclaimed: "This could damage the reputation of the charity because most chain letters are scams."
What poppycock! Look at what has happened:
1. A well-meaning amateur—with no fund-raising
experience—sent a letter out to 24 couples asking for a small donation to be
sent directly to a cause she believed in. Clearly, she was an intuitive Method
Marketer, having gotten into the heads and under the skin of her friends
with her absolute honesty. What’s more she only asked for ten dollars; it’s
probably safe to assume not one of these stars and nabobs had been asked for
so paltry a sum since they were in college.
2. The friends were obviously in the upper education and
income strata, because they had the wherewithal to get ten personal letters out
along with photocopies of the list.
3. These ten, in turn, sent it to ten others in this upper
league of power, money and influence.
4. The United States Postal Service should be thrilled. Instead of going out at the brutally low
Non-Profit Rate, all these letters were mailed with highly profitable First
Class postage.
5. The mailings cost Memorial Sloan-Kettering nothing. Zip. Nada. No creative. No production.
No postage. No postage for reply mail. All revenue was pure profit!
6. No fund raising agencies got their greedy hooks into this
promotion to claim their pound of flesh. Again, all revenue was pure profit!
In
short, this is fund raising perfection.
As of July 1997, according to Chute, the promotion had
brought in 24,000 new donors whose average give of $17 made for a total of
$408,000.
The headline of a story by David Segal, The
Florida Times Union:
Letters Cough Up
$800,000 $10 Gifts Swamp Miffed Hospital
Dunno where Segal got the $800,000 number. With an exponentially expanding list of contributors all things are possible.
Imagine! Twenty-four thousand brand new donors whose combined
net worth was in the tens of billions—people Sloan-Kettering would never have been able to reach under
ordinary circumstances with ordinary pleas for money!
What’s more, the scheme is self-perpetuating. “Checks will
probably be coming in long after I’m dead,” Chute confided.
When I first covered this effort
for Target Marketing, I pompously
wrote: “Be advised that this entire caper
is an aberration; any fund raiser who tried to build a marketing plan and a
business using this technique by itself would be positively nuts.”
I wish I could take that back.
As Carol Farkas said to the Times: ''We need the money,'' she said. ''If it goes on forever, great.''
Takeaways
to Consider:
•
This promotion is textbook magnificent direct mail. Here’s why:
• Let’s start with email:
The
first thing I look at when I see an email in my in-box is the “FROM” line. If
it is from…
…
someone I know well and like and respect…
…
and know that person will not be wasting my time…
…
I absolutely will click-to-open it. It’s a 100% click rate.
•
Conversely, if the FROM line is someone I don’t know, and I’m busy or in a foul
mood, chances are I will delete without reading.
•
On the computer you are a mouse click away from oblivion.
• Let’s talk about the
Carol Farkas effort:
…
It came via direct mail. An envelope that had to be physically handled.
…
The cornercard (upper left) said Jon Saunders (a dear friend) at Bozell.
…
Our names were neatly typed. Not on a label. This was the real deal.
…
In the upper right was a USPS First Class Stamp. Not a metered indicia, not a
printed indicia (indicating this was NOT about Bozell business, but rather
something personal from Jon Saunders who obviously paid for the stamp rather
than send it to the Bozell mail room and cheat his company.).
…
Ergo, I opened it, natch.
• "All mail is sorted over a wastebasket."
—Leah Pierce, Freelancer
•
The late Gary Halbert (1945-2020) was a flamboyant, hugely successful direct mail
entrepreneur and copywriter. Throughout his career he proclaimed:
• "People have two piles
of incoming mail: the 'A' pile and “B” pile.
• "The 'A' pile is
personal stuff—bills, personal letters, business letters or a scrawled note
from the kid in college asking for emergency money.
• "The 'B' pile is
everything else. For example, it has a printed BULK MAIL postage indicia in the upper right
corner and blazing teaser copy that announces this is advertising mail.
• "Halbert loved to amuse
his audiences with a riff. 'Imagine an envelope from your lawyer with a huge
teaser: 'HERE’S HOT NEWS ABOUT YOUR NEW LAWSUIT!'
• "Everybody opens all of
their 'A' pile mail. If people don’t know what’s in an envelope, they’ll open
it.
• "The object for direct
mailers: Get your 'B' offer into the prospect’s 'A' pile.
• "Ergo: never use Bulk
Rate and never use teasers or indicia on an envelope you absolutely want
opened."
•
Ain’t no “A” pile or “B” pile in email. If it’s in your in-box, it all looks
the same.
• “Short words! Short
sentences! Short paragraphs!”
—
Andrew J. Byrne, Freelancer
•
“Success in direct mail is 40% lists, 40%
offer, 20% everything else.”
—Ed
Mayer
• Carol Farkas followed
this dictum slavishly…
…
The List: Anybody that received this letter was on the sender’s “A” list.
…
The Offer: “Please forward a check for $10 (no more) to…”
•
Foolproof instructions. Carol tells you
precisely what to do.
1. Please forward a check for $10 (no more) made
payable to “The Home Care Program, MSKC”, c/o (Physician in Charge), MD, 1275
York Avenue, New York, NY 10021.
2. Please, retype this letter on your letterhead and
send it to ten friends or individuals in your company or organization whom you
know personally and know will be able to help. With your letter, please
send the names of those who received it along with the enclosed list of
recipients to date.
All contributions are fully tax deductible. No goods
or services have been offered or received by you in consideration of your
gift. Thanks for joining me in supporting this worthwhile endeavor.
• Asking someone to
“retype this letter on your letterhead and send it to ten friends”… is a big
ask, but…
… all these folks are “A”
listees with plenty of money and office help. They can simply hand off the task
to a secretary to type 10 letters and envelopes, get the sender’s signature,
make 10 Xerox copies of the list of donors, insert the elements in the
envelopes, affix the First Class Stamps and mail them.
• A Collateral Bonus:
Farkas gave the glitterati something fun to talk about at cocktails and dinner
parties.
• Ya gotta love it!
