Mass Philanthropy Part 2

Christmas Seals was one of the very first mass fundraising campaigns ever initiated.

Originating in Denmark where a Danish postal clerk came up with the idea of adding an extra charitable stamp to holiday cards mailed over the Christmas season, the campaign sought to raise funds to help children sick with tuberculosis. Introduced into the United States in 1907 and in Canada in 1908,by 1916,this lowly little stamp had raised $1 million…which today would be more than $20 million!

By using something as inexpensive as a stamp to encourage large numbers of people to support a cause, this campaign demonstrated the power of “small donations from many” when it came to fundraising and was soon followed by many other similar initiatives like Easter Seals and the March of Dimes.

The other thing it demonstrates is how formidable the collective can be when it comes to raising awareness and mobilizing public interest in an issue. A few years after the campaign was introduced, the number of volunteers for the National Association for the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis had grown from 5,000 to 500,000. And just as important, the campaign attracted the attention of then-President Theodore Roosevelt who not only publicly endorsed the campaign, but was also instrumental in mobilizing the Rockefeller International Health Commission in joining the fight against the diseas