When a vendor’s prepaid mail credits run dry, most teams face a choice: sign another contract, or let their newest donors go unthanked.
Who
Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center runs one of the more personal donor programs in cancer care, right down to circles built for individual supporters, like Echo Alliance for women and Investor Collective for men, that have raised millions over the past decade. That same attention to the individual extends to something smaller but just as deliberate: a handwritten thank-you note sent to every brand-new, first-time individual donor. It’s managed by their Philanthropy Specialist for Individual Giving, and it’s one of the first things a new donor hears from the organization after they give.
The Challenge
That thank-you card had been running through a separate vendor on prepaid credits. It worked, until the credits ran out. At that point, the team was looking at renewing a contract with a vendor outside their existing tools, just to keep a touchpoint that mattered running.
The card also had to earn its place. Mary Bird Perkins had already been through the hard version of this problem once on a different piece, the Partners of Hope card, where finding a handwriting font realistic enough to feel genuine took real effort.
Whatever replaced the vendor card needed to feel just as personal, without that same font hunt. It also couldn’t add another system for the team to manage. They were already sorting a weekly new-donor report by hand, picking out who was truly new (not a returning donor whose gift just came through under a different name) and who wasn’t.
Why EverTrue
Mary Bird Perkins didn’t need a new vendor. They needed to use what they already had. The team moved the thank-you card over to Pledgemine by EverTrue as an on-demand project, run against the unit balance already sitting in their contract instead of a new line of spend.
That shift did two things at once. It let the team keep their existing workflow: pull the weekly new-donor report, filter out the corporate gifts and the “new” donors who’d actually given for years under a different attribution, and send the card only to the individual donors giving for the first time. And it turned the handwriting font search that had been such a challenge on Partners of Hope into a much easier one. Pledgemine’s realistic handwriting font options meant the team could find the right feel for this card without the same drawn-out hunt.
The Results
The card now runs entirely on-demand, sent weekly to every true first-time individual donor Mary Bird Perkins identifies, using contract units they already had instead of a renewed vendor agreement. The front cover keeps it simple: warm imagery, a short handwritten-style note about the support network a new donor has just joined, the kind of message a patient’s care team would recognize.
“I think this one looks really good. I love it too… I know it was such a challenge when we did the Partners of Hope card, trying to find a handwritten font. [This time,] I’m just excited for more people to start getting it.” — Individual Giving team, Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center
It’s a small piece of mail carrying a large message: the first gift someone makes to Mary Bird Perkins is noticed, and it’s answered by something that feels handwritten, not processed.
Generosity doesn’t stop mattering after the vendor contract runs out, and it shouldn’t have to wait on a new one either. For Mary Bird Perkins, the answer wasn’t more tools, it was making fuller use of the one they already had. If a first-time donor’s thank-you is riding on a vendor relationship outside your core stack, it’s worth asking what’s already sitting in the contract you have.