| Brief | Children's letters to Santa used to end up at a Post Office, undeliverable. Instead of ignoring them, the US Postal Service made these letters available to the public. Operation Santa went online in 2017, allowing people to browse handwritten letters and select ones to respond to with gifts. When letters were adopted, people were instructed to bring their gifts to a specific Post Office, where they could wrap presents, write letters from Santa to the recipients, and send their packages. |
| Story (original language) | A child’s letter to Santa, filled with hopes and needs, eventually ends up at a Post Office, undeliverable. Instead of ignoring them, the Postal Service made these letters available to the public who could fulfill those holiday wishes. But the system was outdated. Most letters went unanswered and were ultimately destroyed.To preserve the program’s earnest intentions while making it easier to implement, we brought Operation Santa online in 2017. Now, when the physical letters come in, they are vetted and scanned by a dedicated team. Sensitive information, like last names and addresses, is encrypted and used only by the Postal Service for delivery later. On the platform, people browse handwritten letters and select ones to respond to with gifts. The letters create a deeply personal connection between the reader and the writer, making Operation Santa a new one-to-one charity system within the USPS infrastructure. When letters were adopted, people were instructed to bring their gifts to a specific Post Office, where they could wrap presents, write letters from Santa to the recipients, and send their packages.Taking Operation Santa online opened the program up to a new and always-connected audience. Studies show millennials are more generous with their donations than other generations but more critically selective in the recipients of their donations. In general, people prefer donating directly to people rather than to big charities. By creating a website that connected a visitor with a unique handwritten letter, we could appeal to this big-hearted population and get more letters answered.And we did. By the third week of the program, every letter had been adopted. As new ones were added, they were quickly chosen, too. By Christmas, 100% of the nearly 5,000 letters in our pilot program were adopted. |