Autumn update: Our latest news
From Me to You has had a busy Summer and Autumn, as you’ll see below, but with so many recent reports of the continued delays of treatments for those living with cancer and few visitors or companions allowed in hospitals, letters continue to be a vital source of support.
So, what have we been up to?
Our worldwide journey continues... Over the summer the Donate A Letter programme received 2,018 letters and signed up 273 new letter writers from across the globe; countries include USA, Australia, Denmark, Jersey, New Zealand and the Philippines, as well as so much support from writers in the UK.
It takes a postal tribe
It costs us an average of £2.10 to process and deliver each letter. We are so grateful to our volunteer letter readers and packers (especially Ruth C), who ensure the letters go out every week, and for everyone who donates stamps, keeping our postage costs down.
Workshops galore
As we move into autumn and winter, we are now holding both in person and online events. In both September and October, we reached over 100 people with our online letter writing workshops every month. Many thanks to Expedia and VRBO and the Inverness Soroptimist for also hosting us. If you would like us to host an online letter writing event with your group, please do let us know.
Thank You Letter Service launches
Keen to build greater connectivity between writers and letter recipients in our Donate A Letter programme, we have initiated a pilot Thank You Letter Service so letter recipients can write back (if they wish). We received funding from the Lottery Community Fund for Loneliness to run this pilot. If it works well we will look to extend the service to all our letter recipients and to a pen pal scheme. Thank you to Colleen and Kim who were instrumental in getting this off the ground.
It’s time for a new website!
It’s five years since we built our website and we’ve definitely outgrown it (which is a great place to be). We’re now halfway through the new design and build to create a website giving us greater SEO and able to house our services and facilitate more letters. Watch this space!!
Podcasts and PR
Always keen to promote our message that the isolation of friends and family can be alleviated by a simple letter from a loved one, we have been featured on the podcast You, Me and Big C, which directed a huge number of people to our website. And thank you to Clare, who has started doing some pro bono PR with us, and secured us articles in local Hampshire and London newspapers.
Big Letter Write reaches new highs
October has seen our Big Letter Write, and this year we did it a little bit differently to ensure more inclusion whilst being Covid safe. The boost of this campaign saw not only over 100 new sign ups to write for DAL in October (up 70% on an average month) we also had over 30 new attendees to our workshop and 843 letters written because of Big Letter Write (also up 70% on an average month)!
In new faces we Trust
This month we have welcomed new Trustees Anne James and Liz Kentish this month. Both bring a wealth of charity experience and we’re delighted and honoured they've joined us.
Last but not least
We would like to give our continued thanks to Spotlight Post who donate every time someone subscribes to their subscription boxes; Letters Connect who donate all their profits to us from their monthly letter writing workshops; and to everyone reading this - not only does your support allow us to continue our work, it means we can do more than we ever imagined five years ago.