The power of receiving letters: Hannah Brencher’s TED talk
Howard Lake | 15 November 2016 | Blogs
If you are ever in doubt about the value of sending and receiving a letter, listen to Hannah Brencher’s TED talk.
Fundraisers send lots of different kinds of letters to supporters – requests for donations and thank you letters of course. But clever fundraisers know that many supporters truly value these communications in a way which it is easy to forget given access to the myriad other methods of communicating available at most of our fingertips.
Some people face loneliness, despair and other challenges. Handwritten or personalised letters can bring delight, pleasure and positivity to some recipients.
Hannah Brencher knows this. Her mother always wrote her letters and they were a source of comfort. When she herself experienced depression after moving to New York from college, she tried to deal with it by writing love letters to strangers, leaving them in public places to be found. Their impact was remarkable.
In her TED talk from 2012 she explains how valuable letters can be, and how a global initiative, The World Needs More Love Letters, has developed from it in which handwritten letters are rushed to those in need of a boost.
Fundraisers – keep writing to your supporters – and writing back when they respond.
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About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.