The office mission is to listen to the writers' views, experiences, and ideas and coordinate an automated response on behalf of the White House.

[5] Correspondence from the President includes greetings, intended as recognition of individual milestones such as birthdays, marriages, and graduations, special letters with custom responses, messages written for particular groups or events, and proclamations, intended to mark annual holidays or national occasions in which a ceremonial document from the President is appropriate.

[13] The Bush administration also added a calligrapher to the Correspondence Office to prepare official photographs of the President with a visitor or dignitary to then send to that person as a gift.

[13] In the first year of the Obama administration the White House received tens of thousands of letters, parcels, and emails per day.

[14][15] His senior aides have acknowledged that the letters played an important role in informing the President's perceptions of how policies were impacting ordinary people.

The letter became a centerpiece of the White House effort to pass the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act through Congress in March 2010.

[18][19][20][21] The youth correspondence team identified and escalated letters from children, including 8-year-old Fore Putnam who pled for help for his father with kidney failure and, after the White House called and intervened, received aid from a doctor in New York.