Direct mail donor postcards

A fundraising appeal asks each donor for a different amount. A donor who gave $50 last time is asked for $50 and up. A donor who stopped giving gets a gentler ask, and a new donor gets a fixed starting point.

Almost none of that is design work. The amounts follow from the last gift, the greeting from the name, and the address from the list. Making each card by hand means retyping the donor file into a layout. The design work is the template.

The template holds a field name wherever a donor's details go, and the merge fills it for each donor. The template and every merged card are plain Polotno JSON documents.

What the merge works out

Fields appear in the card text as {{first_name}}, {{greeting}} or {{ask_1}}. Some come straight from the list, like first name and city. The rest are worked out per donor before the card renders.

Field	How it is set
Greeting	"Dear Margaret," by default. "Dear Dr. Montgomery-Fitzgerald," when the name has a title, and "Dear Friend," when there is no first name
Gift amounts	Active donors: their last gift, then about 1.5× and 2×, rounded to amounts a fundraiser would print. Lapsed donors: smaller steps. New donors: $25, $50 and $100
Meals	Three meals per dollar of the first gift amount
Address lines	The full name, and one line for city, state and ZIP
QR code	One per donor, linking to an online gift page

The sample list has 20 donors. Upload your own CSV and any extra column becomes a field the template can use. The "download a sample" link shows the columns the demo expects.

One card per donor group

The Versions step shows the card the way each group sees it: active, lapsed or new donors. Switch group above the card, then type that group's headline and opening directly on it. Each group also has its own photo.

The match deadline is set once for all groups. In the demo a sponsor doubles gifts until December 31.

The address side

Each format is a postcard in 4 × 6, 6 × 9 or 6 × 11 in, with a photo front and an address side. The address side carries the zones USPS reserves. Those are the postage corner and the delivery address area, plus the barcode clear zone along the bottom edge, 5/8 in high across the rightmost 4 3/4 in.

The address block and the permit indicia are locked into their zones. Drag anything else into one and a red warning appears. Export stays off until it moves.

Edge cases on real donor files

The sample list carries the records that break a template drawn around one donor.

Names longer than their box

Text boxes are fixed areas. A long merged value like "Dr. Montgomery-Fitzgerald" shrinks the text to fit its box, down to a set minimum. Text that still does not fit at the minimum is flagged in the proof, so you can fix the card before it prints.

Records that cannot be mailed

A record with an incomplete address cannot be delivered. The proof lists it as unmailable, and the export leaves it out.

Fields the list does not have

A template can use a field your CSV has no column for. The proof lists each one before anything prints.

Proof and export

The proof steps through the donors one at a time. Its report lists the unmailable records, the missing fields and every text that was shrunk.

Export writes one print-ready PDF with bleed for the whole list, in list order. It renders in the browser, which suits a proof run. For a full mailing the same merge runs on a server alongside Polotno's PDF export, since it reads and writes plain design JSON.

The demo does not presort mail, standardize addresses against USPS data or print an Intelligent Mail barcode. Your mail house's software adds those, and the barcode clear zone stays empty for it.

Where it fits

Use this if you build a donor or fundraising platform and want your customers to make appeal mail inside it. Or if you run a print and mail service and want clients to set up their own appeal mailings.

To have this built against your own templates and donor data, talk to us.