At a previous organization where I worked, most of our letters were four pages so we could touch on a bit of a few things we did so as to not allienate anyone if it was a single topic on a program they may not support. We had to talk about a lot of programs or basically say nothing at all.

As for the person who originally sent this. Regardless of how big (or small) the mistake, if there is any outward consequence, you should have disclosed it to those that needed to know – e.g. your boss.

It’s always better to inform people and decide on the best way to correct it, move forward, and put processes in place to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

Like most everyone, I’ve had to do the occasional remail after something screwed up to a royal degree. In almost every case, the “corrective” mail did as well or better than the gaffe package.

But in each case, the organization never apologized. No “I’m sorry if you were baffled by this grievous error”… no blame was accepted or assigned.

The lead was just “Oops” … we goofed. And as much as I hate passive structure and politicians who dodge blame, “Mistakes were made” has worked wonderfully well.

Our donors are on our side. If anything, our “oops” humanizes our efforts, taking them out of the arena of junk mail and back to the corral of personal correspondence. No need to blame or even explain. Every donor has done an “oops” and will understand.

A great mistake: the printing plates got switched in some screwball way so the letter read Page 1, Page 1, page 4, page 4. “Oops!”

Since we write complete asks for contributions with rationale and emotion on every page, donors understood the problem and gave at a normative rate.

The printer offered to do a “make-good”, free printing, but we still had to pay postage. Worth a shot? Absolutely. Put an “Oops!” on the carrier, open the letter with a brief “gosh darn a goof!”, replicate the rest of the letter, and the make-good “oops” letter pulled in more revenue than the original… and a higher net revenue since no printing costs.

You mean four-page fundraising letters (apart from stewardship pieces to major donors) are expected to elicit an action? Four pages is a newsletter — if you want my attention, there’d better be six different options for involvement in that much wasted paper.