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What is the most appropriate way to address a motivational letter for a graduate program? Multiple people will read the letter. How should I address it if I want to avoid the "To whom it may concern" phrase, and salute the female reader? Is it appropriate to write "Dear Madams, Sirs?"
P.S. Many of the salutation posts are marked as duplicates, or closed but I did not see this question answered.
For posterity, here is the bounty message I wrote to get more attention to this question: "As a parent and taxpayer, I would like to address a formal letter (starting with "Dear") to nine members of my local Board of Education. This is an elected body and has a mix of genders. I don't want to have to write out all nine names. I am hopeful my situation is subsumed in this question. I am starting the bounty because the existing answers did not receive spectacular votes, so I'm unsure whether @Sanctor's [answer][1] can be relied upon. (The other existing answer only addresses a special case.)"
This was originally contributed by @JOSH. I was going to award it the bounty but I couldn't, because he removed his answer. So I have reposted it here
To address the members of a Board:
Dear Board Members
is an appropriate form you can use.
(www.businesswritingblog.com)
Only one person at a time will read the letter. Dear Sir/Madam will address each person when it's their turn to read the letter.
If they're all in a graduate program, Dear Student would seem obvious.
If the correspondence is to members of a body individually, perhaps asking each for his own opinion, then Dear Board Member would seem obvious, although that partly depends on what kind of membership of what kind of board. For members of the board of a company, Dear Director.
If the correspondence is to a body collectively, perhaps giving it your opinion, then Dear Members of Boardname might seem obvious; Dear Boardname would be better. Again, that partly depends on what kind of board. If it's a British limited company such as Bucks, Mega & Cashgrab then Dear Messrs Bucks, Mega & Cashgrab might be obvious.
Styles of address and salutations are very well covered in, for instance, Debrett's Correct Form and several big, church-bible sized variants of Webster’s Dictionary - but mine being stored in an attic since the WWW snuck up, I find the question too elusive for Google.
Where appropriate, you could, perhaps, use 'Dear colleagues'.
Depending upon the purpose of the letter (asking for something, praising something, criticizing something) the salutation should accomplish something of the purpose in itself. For example, if the salutation is: "Dear friend of education" the writer is (rhetorically) placing himself/herself in a specific category and placing all readers in the same group. Note that gender is irrelevant and also note that in either praise or blame content the reader will be "friendly" i.e. open to the argument. So consider the purpose. What do you want to accomplish? And make the salutation the beginning of the purpose.
I have a cover letter that opens something like:
Greetings to the members of ________,
Then, since it's a motivational letter you could just open, flat out, with some statement about how awesome your students are. If you're going to greet the members of that graduate program then you should literally greet the members of that graduate program though.
