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Editing of Student Thank you letters

Michele GuyorBorthwick

I am interested in knowing how much “editing” others do to the student Thank You letters they receive. I have found that since we started using letters submitted in Award Management vs. in the past when students came to my office and wrote a note on a card, that in general, I am getting longer messages with more personal, and better overall content. Additionally, unlike the written notes, I now have the ability to edit before mailing - which is a good thing, as I can fix punctuation, capitalization errors and typos. So here is my quandary – how much editing is appropriate? What do you do with a letter that struggles with grammar or structure problems, now that you technically have the ability to “edit” it. For example, an ESL first-gen engineering student whose letter told a wonderful story of their struggle to succeed and the support they received from the school but was full of unconjugated verbs? Or the non-traditional, working mom, Criminal Justice student whose heart-felt note was not very well organized and structured?

My inclination is to do the basic editing of typos and obvious small errors but not change the students “voice”, however, we have recently had a few donors (older) give us a feedback about the quality of the writing in the letter they received.

I don't think there is a right or wrong approach to this - just wondering how others are handling it.

Thanks for your feedback!

Michele

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Comments

Allison Pultz

@Michele GuyorBorthwick I also edit punctuation and spelling…the basic stuff, but aim to keep the student's voice. We also ask for a short bio. I ask them to write it in the second person, and I more heavily edit that. this blurb gives the donor a little background info that can help inform maybe why the language in a letter might be different.

Russel Heskin

@Michele GuyorBorthwick I'll fix typos, spelling, and obvious grammar. On rare occasions, I'll reword something when it's obvious the student's first language isn't English and their meaning isn't clear. I'll also fix branding issues: Our university uses either “Western University of Health Sciences” or “WesternU,” but not “Western University” or “Western.”

Stephanie Lamphere

@Michele GuyorBorthwick I do quite a bit of editing to the student letters to fix grammar, spelling, typos etc. I will also remove any repetitious sections or anything where they thank the donor “for choosing me” or include the amount of their scholarship. I don't change the tone or content of letters, but I do end up editing almost all of them to some extent.

Garrett Roe

@Michele GuyorBorthwick Unfortunately, we find that editing of simple typos, sentence structure, spelling, branding or naming conventions, etc. are needed prior to sending materials to the Donor despite providing directions and reminders to proofread and the ideal content to include. Unfortunately, some recipients do not have the level of detail that we or the Donors are expecting. In some cases and depending on the scale of errors, we will require a resubmission or in the case of a quick, simple fix we will make slight changes to send the materials out quickly.