Medium Bares a Message With Personal Checks : Seattle Company Prints Them With Logos, Slogans of Your Favorite Cause

They may become the financial world’s answer to the bumper sticker: personal checks printed with the logos and slogans of your favorite cause.

You want to get drunk drivers off the road? You can now send a message (“Think before you drink and drive”) to everyone you pay with a personal check.

Prefer to be a little more subtle, yet still make a point?

There’s a check printed with the Greenpeace logo. Or one with a photo of the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial and the words, “In Service to America, Vietnam Veterans of America.”

Later this month, a National Organization for Women check (bearing the slogan “Equality for Women” and a dictionary definition of equality) will be on the market--and no doubt be sent to leading sexists everywhere.

Message!Checks, as these personal checks are called, became available to the public in December, a result of the work of two Seattle women.

As company co-founder Amy Larkin described her firm’s recent evolution, “Actually the idea comes from James Morgan, who is an inventor and who put together a pilot program last year for a small company.

“In doing so, he worked with a local Seattle nuclear freeze group and did a Prevent Nuclear War check. He did a lot of research and worked out the technological kinks. But he was working with a check printer that was then sold and so he was no longer able to deliver his product and folded his company.”

Experience With ‘Nonprofits’

Larkin, who once worked on Wall Street producing a financial analysis report for fixed-income mutual bonds, and her partner Priscilla Fenton, a former teacher, hired Morgan as a consultant and began Message!Check last August. The two women both have extensive experience in working with nonprofit organizations and contacted groups whose aims they believed in. They offered to donate $1 per check order to each organization in exchange for free advertising in the group’s publications.

By December, advertisements for the Greenpeace, Vietnam Veterans of America and Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) checks began appearing in the groups’ respective publications.

In the first five weeks since the ads appeared, 1,500 orders were received.

“We think it’s a good start,” Larkin said by telephone.

“People want all parts of their lives to reflect who they are and we feel this is a perfect vehicle for that. We really hope it’s a whole new way to communicate. . . . The question we keep hearing is ‘What will my bank think of it?’ When these checks come into greater circulation, people will realize it’s fine with their banks. We’re very careful that our checks carry all the information that a check from a bank would carry.”

Message!Check’s checks are printed by what Larkin described as a leading check printer and she said they meet the standards of the American National Standards Institute. To ensure the checks work with individual banks, those who order the checks (at $14 per 200) must send both a current reorder form from their present check supply and a deposit ticket from their checkbook.

Price ‘Very Competitive’

Though the $14 price may sound high, Larkin thinks it’s “very competitive” and said her survey of check prices around the country ranges from $7.50 to $12.50 per 200, depending on their fanciness. (In Southern California, Security Pacific National Bank has personal checks starting at $5.90 per 200.)

Though results are just starting to come in, representatives for each of the organizations involved with Message!Check say they are pleased thus far.

Don Schaet, executive director of MADD, figured the checks “would do a number of good things for MADD. It will further our public awareness program by having this message go out to many more people.

“Secondly, when people use a check like this, people tend to ask them about it and it reinforces the user’s belief in the cause and furthers public awareness of the problem. Thirdly, it provides some revenue for the chapters. A conservative estimate would be about $600 so far. We’ve had a very favorable response from our chapters so it’s working.”

Schaet recently ordered a set of the checks for his own use to test the system. “I was pleased to learn my order was filled within two weeks. I’ve had three or four opportunities to use the checks and I did use the occasion to say, ‘Let me tell you about. . . .’ ”

Ken Berez, the associate director for fund raising of the Vietnam Veterans of America, indicated that he, too, is impressed by the initial results of his organization’s association with Message!Checks.

“We thought it was a low-risk effort on our part,” he said. “We didn’t have to pay anything, just offer them free advertising space for the term of the contract (36 months).

“Since the ad for Message!Check appeared we’ve been getting about a 1% response rate from our membership (about 27,000 people). That’s a pretty decent return rate. Once we start marketing this feature to a wider audience, people will catch on and make it fly. The return in hard dollars isn’t there yet, but with most fund-raising ventures for nonprofit organizations, you have to be patient.”

The idea of printing more than the required information on a check is not a particularly new one. Checks printed with scenic designs such as landscapes were offered by the now defunct United States National Bank of San Diego as early as 1954. In the 1960s, many other banks began offering checks featuring flowers, birds and other designs.

How do banks feel about Message!Check’s appearance in what has traditionally been their territory?

Larkin said that her firm has received no complaints from banks, thanks largely to the careful research done by consultant Morgan.

Judging from responses at two large banks, there may not be much competition from banks in offering special messages on checks. At least not large banks. Said a Bank of America spokesperson: “Bank of America has no plans to offer checks with slogans on them. Because the bank uses automatic reordering, such special orders would require manual processing.”

A spokesperson at Security Pacific National Bank likewise indicated that such a service would most likely mean extra costs for consumers. “The logistics for a bank this size might be tough,” he said. “It would be difficult for a large bank to do it, although if there’s a consumer demand for it, it might be worked out.”

Whatever banks or other financial institutions do, Message!Check expects to be expanding fairly rapidly. Larkin and Fenton are discussing offering their services to commercial firms and estimated that within the next year they’ll be working with at least a dozen nonprofit groups and a few for-profit companies, possibly as many as many as 50 organizations in total.

Already they’ve had to turn down some organizations because the groups were too small.

Asked if they might refuse their services to groups whose beliefs differed from theirs, Larkin suddenly grew silent.

Then she thought for a moment and replied, “I can only say we’re having a very lively discussion about that.”