We created an end-to-end process centered around an online experience that was earnest and easily shared, riding the seasonal surge of goodwill. It was built to be scalable to 33,000 Post Offices nationwide but started this year with the busiest: New York City’s 8th Avenue location. 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. But, a rich scanning and data-extracting process would ensure the privacy of the writers while giving the Postal Service what they needed to deliver Santa’s gifts.

The pilot program launched online in New York City. Physical letters were vetted and scanned to be put on the website. A back-end process was designed to redact personal information and encode letters with unique IDs, protecting the privacy of letter senders while storing addresses for the Postal Service to use. When letters were adopted, people were instructed to bring their gifts to a specific Post Office, where they could wrap gifts, write letters from Santa to the recipients and send their packages.

By the third week of the program, weeks before Christmas, almost every letter had been adopted. As more came in, more were adopted as well. Truckloads of gifts were brought to the Post Office, and all were delivered to families across New York City. The digitization of Operation Santa was covered by news organizations and shared widely across social media. Because of the pilot program’s success, Operation Santa will be available online and at 33,000 Post Offices across the country in 2018. That means more letters will be answered, and more children will keep believing in Santa.

When a child writes a letter to Santa, they put their wishes into words. If those letters go unanswered, hope may vanish from children who have little else to hold on to. Operation Santa starts with these letters, with which we built a website that could better connect them to Santas around New York. We created a full user journey — for people adopting letters and Postal Service staff — that moved from letter to delivery on Christmas Eve. Operation Santa helped provide magic for families that can’t afford it, and for those Santas who often take it for granted.

Taking Operation Santa online opened the program up to a huge new audience — one that is always connected. Studies show millennials are more generous with their donations than other generations but more critical of which organizations they give to. In general, people prefer donating directly to people rather than to big charities. By creating a website that connected a visitor with a unique handwritten letter, we could appeal to this big-hearted population and get more letters answered.

Every holiday season, the U.S. Postal Service receives millions of letters addressed to Santa Claus. Most are written by needy children asking for help with basic needs. The Postal Service felt a responsibility to deliver these letters — letters written in hope of having a happy holiday. Operation Santa was started by the Postal Service to give the public an opportunity to respond to these undeliverable letters. Our goal was for every letter to receive a response.