Kivi Leroux Miller, the author of the Kivi’s Nonprofit Communications Blog, is deeply disappointed with the results of an experiment she calls “What I Got When I Gave.”

In November, Ms. Miller converted credit-card miles into cash which she distributed as $25 gifts to 12 different national charities through Network for Good, a nonprofit group that channels online donations to nonprofit groups nationwide.

Three and a half months later, she writes, only 4 of the 12 organizations have acknowledged her gift, even though she offered them her e-mail and and mailing address through Network for Good.

Of those four, she commended National Public Radio, which sent an impersonal thank-you not by e-mail within a few weeks of the gift. “Personalization would have been nice, but at least they got the gold star for timeliness,” she writes.

Interplast, a charity that provides reconstructive surgery to poor in developing countries, earned kudos for a personalized paper thank-you note that included before and after photos of a child who had been helped by surgery.

The Alliance for Climate Protection acknowledged the gift with a personally addressed paper thank-you, and the fourth, St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital, followed up by adding Ms. Miller’s name to its e-mail newsletter.

Ms. Miller isn’t naming names on the thankless remaining eight. It’s possible, she writes, that for those organizations, $25 is too small a gift to acknowledge, particularly during the holiday rush, or that the charities aren’t set up to acknowledge donors through the Network for Good site. But still, she asks, “can’t a girl get a thank-you note?”

What’s your organization’s thank-you policy? Share your thoughts in the comments box below.
— Paula Wasley