Will Email Help or Hurt?

For the past year we’ve been asking supporters on our email list how best to communicate with you. Not surprisingly many of you have opted to receive our newsletter and fundraising appeals via email only.

I admit this request makes an old fashioned, 20th century fund-raising guy like me nervous. When people receive our materials via regular mail they have a physical reminder of all our news as well as a request for funds on their kitchen counter, living room coffee table, bedside nightstand or whatever other surface they choose to clutter. Many who intend to send us a check put it aside for a more convenient time. Some never come back to it, but others are reminded and eventually get around to mailing that all important (particularly this year) donation.

But an email is ephemeral…. So easy to delete with a keystroke or let languish below an overwhelming number of newer messages. I fear the donation rate among those who get our newsletter and appeals only online will drop precipitously, just when we need every penny we can scrounge.

So I challenge those of you who receive our communications online (for we will honor your request despite my fear), to prove me wrong: continue your support at the same rate you did when those hard copies took up residence with you.

And here’s a further challenge. How about forwarding the email you get from us to a friend? This is a very important way you can help us that takes almost no effort and no cost. With the passing of so many of my parents’ generation and the prohibitive expense of reaching out to new supporters via surface mail, maintaining our base has become one of our major challenges.

Our success primarily springs not from a few major donors, (although we value their support tremendously), but from thousands of modest contributors. I am convinced that there are thousands more who would support us if all the progressive people in the country knew about the RFC. And such support would mean we could increase, rather than decrease, the amount we could give away in 2009 and beyond.

Here’s the chance for you cyber-oriented folks to convince me. Show me that you pay just as much attention to our email as you do to our surface mail. And also demonstrate that the electronic versions are even better than the hard copy, by forwarding our email newsletter and other materials to one, two or many friends.

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