Thank you, please: familiarity doesn't breed contempt in this case.

Twelve days after a substantial check was sent to the local headquarters of The Salvation Army, in came a letter from that worthy organization.

What was expected was a "Thank you, please" communication. The Salvation Army is one of our more sophisticated nonprofits, and it knows the value of an immediate "Thank you" coupled with "Can you give more?"

Uh-oh. One look at the stamp and it was clear that this wasn't a "Thank you, please." The window envelope with a nonprofit stamp was all too clear: bulk mail.

THE CURSE OF AUTOMATION

What happened here is an all too common problem. No, make that an all too common dereliction. Some 20 years ago, a human hand would have suppressed a bulk mailing going out to a donor who had just shown, in the most tangible way, respect. That hand would have reached into a different stack and sent out a "Thank you" notice ... or, if the nonprofit were reasonably astute, a "Thank you, please" response.

But we're automated today ... in this instance, blindly automated. Once mailed, the bulk letter cemented an arm's-length, non-relationship. Had coincidentally a classic "Thank you" message also been in the mail, the result would have looked even more uneven: "We love you, whoever you are."

The bulk letter was well-written. It was computer-personalized. The type-font wasn't the too-standard Times Roman. If a contribution hadn't been sent, you might have admired it for its apparently personal touch. But the very nature of the apparently personal touch spawned a mild irritation. The letter began:

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Lewis,

How are you doing during these busy holiday weeks? And, expectedly, the letter builds to:

I hope you will once again open your heart to those in need.

Oops. Some days later, in came the expected letter--"When I think of your generosity and how you have helped change the lives of people whom you've never met, I am so grateful...." It's a beautifully-written thank-you note, without the "Please" suffix. The recognition is appreciated, but you have to wonder why, with the time-gap that more than covered standard-class mail delivery, a local agency couldn't have yanked the mass-appeal missive from the pile.

Before you leap to a defense of this quite common unfortunate timing (even less-fortunate because this, a local branch, isn't wallowing in bulk response), join in this analysis.

Is one-to-one worth the time, trouble, and expense? As the line from"The King and I" goes: Is a puzzlement. Major nonprofits face a dilemma. Super-saturation of appeals means that treating individuals as individuals is more and more uncommon ... ergo, more and more likely to generate competitive response. Yeah, but it also is more and more likely to escalate costs.

Anything--anything--that says to a prospective donor, "Only you," is competitively worthwhile. Like ancient Rome, image is murderously difficult to build and murderously easy to be torn down.

Stay in character. Here's an email appeal. The basis, as described in the heading: "25 Years Reconciling Prisoners to God, Family & Community." We forgive the ampersand and move to the thrust, which begins:

"You can make a child's wish come true!

"Dear Friend of Children: "I want to share a letter with you--but it's heartbreaking. This is from a man named Richard. He's writing from prison with a poignant request." be desperately wants someone to deliver a Christmas present to his young daughter, Jennifer

"Please read his letter. It will pierce your heart as it did mine. Richard knows that his innocent young daughter is suffering because of his mistakes. He hopes someone will show the love of God to his little girl."

OK, this approaches one-to-one, although they should have made it clear that Jennifer is a symbolic target, not the only actual one. Click on the link and it clarifies: "Help us reach 500,000 children just like Jennifer. "Well, maybe.

Then there are four surprisingly cold directions:

1) Select Donation Amount

2) Personal Information

3) Payment Information

4) Submit Your Donation

The initial caps are a damaging factor, as are the arm's-length instructions, and you should forever submit the word "Submit" to the netherworld, along with the asterisks adjacent to "Personal Information." You'd expect to find this cold demand when placing an order with a commercial enterprise that never heard of you before: "required information." Hey, Friend, you contacted me.

The point isn't that something is wrong with identifying donors or requiring information. Rather, it's that something is wrong with this method of identifying donors. We should know better than to sell somebody, "We love you," and then follow up with "Who are you?"

Who am I? Who are you to ask, "Who are you?"?

Whether one Jennifer or 500,000 Jennifers exist, any appeal glorifying the donor has an edge compared to competing appeals that glorify the organization. This example isn't terrible. It's just less dynamic than it might be.

If we all accept the hypercompetitive nature of the 2008 fundraising milieu, any message less dynamic than it might be has a negative significance considerably greater than it would have been a few decades ago.

Why not inspect your appeals for unnecessary coolness? If you can project an "Only you" concept without fouling it with "You're just a unit to us," watch response go up.

Herschell Gordon Lewis is the principal of Lewis Enterprises, Fort Lauderdale, Fla., consulting with and writing direct response copy for clients worldwide. Among his 31 books is the recently-published "Hot Appeals or Burnt Offerings." Among his other books are "Open Me Now"; "Asinine Advertising"; "How to Write Powerful Fundraising Letters"; "On the Art of Writing Copy"; "Marketing Mayhem"; and "Effective E-Mail Marketing." His Web site is www.herschellgordonlewis.com