‘We got mail’: Ottawa Mission hopeful donations come after postage strike

After almost bearing witness to the Canada Post strike for a month, The Ottawa Mission received a huge pile of mail on Wednesday — and a bit more on Thursday.

It is a relief for the local charity that issued a plea to donors ahead of the strike to find alternate ways to give this holiday season. The non-profit receives the majority of its donations through mail and had to quickly pivot and ask people to either donate online, by phone or in person.

The backlogs from the strike, which started late November, is expected to bring delays into the New Year. This is difficult news for the Mission, which relies on people’s generosity during the holiday season to power its efforts throughout the year.

“This was a huge shock when it happened and how long it continued,” Namrata Goyes, director of development at the Ottawa Mission told CityNews in an interview.

The Mission’s annual Christmas meal, hosted on Dec. 15, is entirely dependent on mail donations, she said. To make sure the event was not impacted, staff had to use every avenue to communicate to people how to donate this year. Using social media, radio, print, TV and picking up the phone to call people who usually donate this year, Goyes said the all-hands-on-deck approach made an impact.

“In terms of fundraising, it has been a hit, I won’t lie, we haven’t recovered everything,” Goyes said. “But donors did step up and we were able to do our Christmas meal successfully, which is amazing.”

This year the non-profit served 17,000 meals. Goyes said if donors did not switch how they gave, the Mission would have been forced to lower the quality of food or cut some items from the menu, but thankfully that did not need to happen.

“It will be interesting to see what’s going to happen in the months to come, because our Christmas fundraising kind of powers a whole year to a large extent,” Goyes said.

On Tuesday, more than 55,000 Canada Post employees were ordered back to work by the Canada Industrial Relations Board, which determined a deal could not be reached before the end of the year. This meant that Canadians from coast to coast and charities like the Mission received a large amount of mail on Wednesday.

Even though the strike is over, the question on if the Mission can survive another long-term postage impact is being thought out.

“We’ve been having these conversations for a while…Mail is expensive,” Goyes said. “The more we can save in things like postage, the more money we have to actually put towards meals, which is eventually what we want to do.”

The first conversations on getting more people to donate outside of mail started during the pandemic when disruptions through illness occurred. Staff at the Ottawa Mission say getting people to shift donations online has been ongoing but some people don’t feel comfortable or can’t donate online.

Part of this reason, Goyes said antidotally, is that these donors might not have access to a computer or are worried about online scams.

“Quite simply, they don’t have a computer, they don’t have access, and it’s easier for them to write that cheque. So I would say it’s an age demographic for sure,” she noted.

One way the Mission tried to combat this was partnering with Dymon Storage, which offered to collect donations in person for the charity at its 11 locations across the city.

Despite its efforts the Mission is anxiously waiting to see how many donations it collected over the course of the strike and if it will be enough to stretch over the next year.

“Whatever happens, happens. But we’re just so grateful that the city really cares and that donors really care,” Goyes said.