And the troubles didn’t stop with a lack of donations, either. Letters sent by the CLC to its supporters weren’t delivered, and its ads in The Catholic Register for the Toronto Pro-Life Forum on June 24-25 were seen by readers a month late, after the event had passed.
“We were on the phones, hoping we could make up for people not mailing in… We sent out an appeal letter on the Internet,” explained Hughes. “We’re going all engines full, and hoping and trusting in God, that once this is over, people will respond and we won’t find ourselves in a crater trying to climb out.”
As Hughes points out, the situation isn’t truly over. Though Canada Post’s 50,000 workers returned to work on June 27, the fallout of the strike and subsequent lockout are still being experienced today, as mail service continues to be backlogged.
The situation is not altogether unfamiliar to Hughes and the CLC, however. Donations tend to decrease when there are natural disasters, such as the Japan tsunami or Haiti earthquake, as supporters send their money elsewhere. The Canada Post strike, however, is far from a natural disaster, giving charities all the more reason to “cringe,” as Hughes said he did when he heard the news early in June.
Another charity that may have cringed upon hearing about the strike was Covenant House Toronto, Canada’s largest youth shelter — and with good reason. The charity estimates it lost at least $150,000 in donations in June, according to Rose Cino, communications manager.
“The mail strike did pose a challenge for our fundraising as we depend on mail for the largest portion of our donations,” said Cino. “We made efforts to reach out to donors by phone and online. While this was helpful, it did not make up the funds we receive by mail.”
One of the alternative methods of donating that helped Covenant House was a particular part of its “Get A Life” ad campaign. The long-winded posters that can be seen on the TTC provided supporters a previously unorthodox opportunity to donate even while on their daily commute: texting. The bottom of the ad reads, “Please donate at covenanthouse.ca or text ‘GETALIFE’ to 45678 to donate $5.”
This is the direction that the mail strike has motivated charities to follow, said Alex Schadenberg of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition. He said EPC lost at least $10,000 during the work stoppage.
The Internet is a direction already taken by about half of the respondents to an online poll conducted by The Globe & Mail, who said they were apathetic to the strike.
The reason? They can do everything they need to online.
The strike, said Schadenberg, is a reminder that charities would benefit by migrating to the web and finding other ways of receiving funds to help the work they do.
“It creates a reality that we need to convince our supporters to become regular donors by credit card or other means in order to ensure that we are not devastated by another Canada Post work stoppage.”
Charities still reeling from postal strike
By Luc Rinaldi, The Catholic RegisterTORONTO - “No snail mail: Who cares?” read a newspaper headline on the morning of June 3, when Canada Post began its rotating postal strikes. It may have been a sentiment shared by many Canadians, but certainly not by registered charities.
For them, it was a “nightmare,” according to Jim Hughes, president of Campaign Life Coalition (CLC), a pro-life charity that simply wouldn’t be able to operate without mail donations.
“We rely upon donations of up to $5,000 a day in order to keep our doors open,” said Hughes, adding that, conservatively, CLC lost $75,000 worth of donations as a result of the strike.
Donations that weren’t sent in June were not made once postal workers were sent back to work on June 27, he said. Instead of having regular contributors “double up” their gifts, the donations were simply lost.
Please support The Catholic Register
Unlike many media companies, The Catholic Register has never charged readers for access to the news and information on our website. We want to keep our award-winning journalism as widely available as possible. But we need your help.
For more than 125 years, The Register has been a trusted source of faith-based journalism. By making even a small donation you help ensure our future as an important voice in the Catholic Church. If you support the mission of Catholic journalism, please donate today. Thank you.
DONATE