By Kay Zhang
I have to say that the Christmas cards project within Care for Children is quite interesting, because it is easy to divide our people into two groups — those who don't want it will keep on resisting, and those who like it keep insisting on running the project no matter how hard is it.
I had been in charge of this program for two years, and now we are doing it again for a third year in China. Personally, I think that it is an out-of-date project and it is hard to make it yield much benefit to the organization — at least if we think of it in terms of cost effectiveness.
However, I have to admit that Christmas is still a big day for many people and, for many people, sending Christmas cards is still the main method of sending greetings.
On the other hand the younger generation prefers to send e-cards because of the popularity of using the Internet, and because the idea of being environmentally friendly is rooted in their hearts more than those of the older generation.
These two contrasting opinions have developed into two camps regarding our Christmas cards promotion. Some marketing managers I know have even suggested to me, in a friendly way, that we drop this project. They said that most people would not spend CNY5 to buy such a small card, even though part of price is a donation. The fact is each year we get about 2,000 orders for cards and this is just about break-even after all the printing, administration, and logistic costs with, perhaps, a small donation to our funds of CNY1,000 to CNY2,000.
This debate is held in our office in October every year and, normally, our group gives way because the boss holds the opposite opinion. However I think that next year there might be a change. After three years of little return even the supporters of the project will come to believe that it is a time for change. On the other if we think of the project in an organizational networking way, this is not a bad way to help to know some new friends. So, speaking for myself, I am not absolutely against this project. It's an interesting feeling!
