We know the small nonprofit’s situation. You’re out there doing very good things with very little – small budget, small office, small staff, if any. Everything is small, except your hearts. You are fighting the good fight and keeping your constituents in the know. You’ve got a quarterly newsletter, a biannual fundraising appeal, thank you letters, and pledge reminders related to those appeals and sometime more mail than you can keep up with.
Often, when it’s time to do a big mailing, the entire staff pitches in to help fold the letters. Or, maybe you go through the headache of coordinating the schedules of your volunteers. The goal is to get them in the office at the same time and knock out that big mailing. Snacks are provided.
- Wouldn’t your staff be better utilized serving the mission and running programs? It’s not a good use of time or resources to pay the Director of Development or the Executive Director, let alone the administrative staff, to sit for eight hours and fold letters.
- Couldn’t you excite your volunteers with a more active role in the organization? Perhaps instead of a fruit tray and letter folding, you give them donors to call and thank.
Any development director can tell you that their biggest headache is not trying to raise money, it’s putting together the logistics of actually organizing the folding and stuffing. This is where you can use a machine to make your life easier?
Every hour on the clock for staff and volunteers is crucial; for staff, it’s costly too. You may be “saving” money by having your staff fold letters, until you look at the salary costs. That $25/hour senior staff just cost $200 to fold and stuff letters all day.
Try investing in a letter folding machine to make that hour more productive. Does 10,000 neatly folded letters in an hour sound productive? And, not just letters. These folders often take different paper sizes and weights, and have different fold settings for newsletters, brochures and pamphlets.
So, concentrate on serving your mission, and let a letter folding machine from Lloyd’s serve your folding needs. It’s an investment that will save your small nonprofit money.