We created an online experience that was both earnest and easily shared, riding the seasonal surge of goodwill. On the platform, people could browse and choose from handwritten letters that they could respond to with gifts. The handwritten letters created a deeply personal connection between the reader and the writer, making Operation Santa a new one-to-one charity system within the USPS infrastructure.

The pilot program launched online for the New York City area around the holiday season. Physical letters were vetted and scanned, then uploaded to the website. To store return addresses while protecting the privacy of the writers, we designed a back-end process to redact sensitive information in the letters. As the URL was shared by participants, news outlets and influencers on social media, it could be easily accessed and navigated from any device.

The website quickly boomed in popularity — so quickly, in fact, that it needed refills of letters multiple times. At least 14 local TV and print news outlets positively covered the heartwarming stories, from the launch of the program to the expansion to include letters from Puerto Rico. This resulted in 9,579,801 impressions for TV media coverage alone.

By day three, 1,000 letters were adopted, matching 2016’s total adoptions. By the third week of the program, almost every letter was being answered. By the end of the program, letter adoptions had increased 340% from 2016.