business letter

Bad News Letter : Refused Request

Background:

You stare at yet another solicitation from a well-meaning service organization. This time it is from Help Your Neighbor, a local nonprofit endorsed by various churches in the city. They are inviting your company, St. Bernard Home and Garden, to be a featured sponsor of their annual Help-Out Day. This event, their major fundraiser and publicity effort, has volunteers from all over the city contributing ones day’s labor to help their less fortunate neighbors with yard work, home repairs, and other tasks. Your requested contribution of $10,000 will help pay for the volunteers’ t-shirts (on which your company name will appear), the supplies, and the picnic that will follow the day’s work.

While this amount doesn’t sound like much for a successful business, you are a comparatively small organization that can afford to make only a limited number of charitable contributions. This year, your company is channeling its support into organizations that are helping those who have lost their jobs or their homes because of the economic slump. Many of your employees know such people, and the general feeling in the company is that donations should go to such organizations as the food bank, the homeless shelter, and nonprofits that assist those looking for work. You have given over $10,000 to such causes this year, and that is all you can afford right now. But these are the types of organizations you will probably continue to choose to support until the economy improves.

Your Assignment:

Write a letter to the Help Your Neighborchair (Jane Dough) turning down her request for a

sponsorship. Write the letter in such a way that you maintain a positive company image while also making clear that you won’t become a sponsor now or any time soon. Perhaps you can think of something that will soften the “no”.

Hints: 

Choose block or modified block format(see Appendix B page 534).

What type of letter is this; what is the best way to start the letter?

Create a letterhead for your company; this will entail creating a fictitious address.

Create the rest of the inside address for Jane Dough. Don’t forget her title and organization name in the inside address.

Think about this from the reader’s point of view –how can you let her down gently?

Think carefully about how much detail to include. Remember to respect the reader’s time

and also her pride.

What type of closing paragraph will you include?

Please remember this is an individual assignment. How this assignment is written and completed will be different for each student.

The letter will be graded using the following criteria.

There will be no re-submission of this assignment, so remember all you’ve learned in previous work and create a great letter the first time!