What's Above Your Fold?

How do you open your mail? Do you pull out all the contents, or do you open the package like a wallet and thumb through what's inside? I ask because we know much too much about the workings of mail, and it's easy to forget that donors don't handle and look at what we send them the way we do.

Back when I had a post office box, I used to stake out the room to watch people get their mail at the end of the day and see them flip through it and toss some pieces into a big bin marked for recycling. There was a big island counter in the center of the P.O. box room, and on the luckiest days I'd have a chance to watch people open their mail — and that's when I realized there are content-pullers and thumb-throughers, and the latter were more likely to toss mail without a closer look.