How the Charitable Choices Guides are Distributed

     Two things are at the heart of our work to promote charities in the Combined Federal Campaign and among other individual donors:

• Our attractive guides that function as guides, not collections of ads, and
• Our complex and very effective system for distributing our guides.

We print and distribute a huge number of guides: more than 721,000 in 2011. Altogether we distribute our guides in 16 distinct ways, which include:

• Handing our guides to employees as they enter their workplaces.
• Mailing guides to federal managers using the excellent list from the Federal Yellow Books directories as well as a list of wealthy individual donors.
• Inserting our guides into publications that go to federal employees (Recreation News) and to federal employees and individual donors (The Washington Post, LA Times, San Diego Union Tribune, Bay Guardian).
• Handing out our guides at military commissaries (through MaxiSaver).
• Delivering our guides to Congressional offices and U.S. embassies.

How we document our distribution

     More than half our guides are inserted in publications (such as the Post and LATimes) that are "audited." This means that their circulation is checked by an independent organization.

    To verify the rest of our distribution figures, we have posted invoices both from our printer (to show the number of each guide that we had printed) and our various distribution outlets.

     We organize our hand-to-hand distribution ourselves. In the DC area, where we distributed more than 75,000 guides by hand outside federal buildings and Metro stations in 2011, we have our distributors submit daily reports. These individual reports are then gathered into a day-by-day chart that notes each location where each distributor handed out our DC-area CFC Guides. Hand-to-hand distribution in DC.(* an .xsl spreadsheet) Nationally, we receive reports from each city where we do hand-to-hand distribution.

* If you are not able to open the .xsl spreadsheet,but would like to view this information, please contact us via email.

Distribution Reports:

• 2011 Summary Distribution Memo

• National CFC Guide Distribution

• DC-area CFC Guide Distribution

• Washington Post Guide Distribution

• California Guide Distribution

Invoices:

• Mailing List invoices – CA and National Guides

• CA Guide - Printing Invoice

• CA Guide - LA Times Inserts Invoice

• CA Guide - San Diego Tribune Inserts Invoice

• CA Guide - San Francisco Bay Guardian Inserts Invoice

• CA Guide - Mailing To Donors

• DC and CA Guides - Military Base Distribution Invoice

• DC Guide - Recreation News Inserts Invoice

• DC Guide - Printing Invoice

• National Guide - Printing Invoice

• National Guide - Mailing Invoice

• Washington Post Guide - Printing Invoice

• Washington Post Guide - Post Inserts Invoice