Episodes of the long-running children's television show Sesame Street are famously "brought to you by" numbers and letters instead of advertisers. This may have inspired ABC Canada Literacy Foundation's latest donation drive, which reverses the Sesame model and asks companies to sponsor letters.

The Letters for Literacy campaign, which debuted two weeks ago, hopes to reach its $100,000 donation goal by charging $3,847 for each letter.

Donors will be thanked in a full-page colour ad in the Toronto Star and Canwest's Vancouver daily The Province, with a reported approximate circulation of 1.5 million between the two. Both papers donated the ad space throughout April.

"We thought it would be a great way get new partnerships and also recognize organizations for all the great work they do for literacy in their communities," said Rina Khosla, director of marketing and partnerships for the organization.

So far the literacy organization is more than a quarter of the way to its goal having sold letters to BC Honda Dealers (the letter B), HarperCollins Canada (H), Indigo's Love of Reading Foundation (I), the Canadian Labour Congress (L), McGraw-Hill Ryerson (M), Ontario Honda Dealers (O) and Tim Hortons (T).

To spark interest in the campaign, ABC first reached out to its current and past donors. Once companies began signing on, ABC would Twitter to broadcast that a given letter had been sold, but also "taunt" their sponsor's competition.

"Thanks to HarperCollins for purchasing the letter H. Luckily P is still available Penguin," ABC tweeted on Feb. 10, the day the first letter was sold.

ABC also runs the annual Gutenberg Media Grab fundraiser, which sells ad media for 65% off media donors' rate cards.

"The grab usually provides substantial funding for us, but with the downturn in media and sales last year, we thought this was an entry-level way for new organizations to come onboard," Khosla said.

Non-corporate individual donors may also take part. All donors have until the end of March to grab their letter.