Quote of the Day: “Pollster, noun: One who measures what the public thinks about some subject it doesn’t think about.” — L.A. Rollins, ‘Lucifer’s Lexicon,’ Reason magazine, December 1975
DC Downsizers keep asking, “When will I be able to see how many Dispatch subscribers there are in my Congressional district?”
We’re now much closer to providing that.
When you finish reading this Dispatch, go to the home page of our website. http://www.downsizedc.org/
You may be logged-in automatically, depending on how you’ve set up your browser. If so, then you’ll see the new “Your Downsize DC Toolbox” in the right hand column. If not . . .
Find the Log In button on the right end of the navigation banner at the top of the page. Click it and log in . . . then you will see “Your Downsize DC Toolbox.”
Please note, if you ONLY have a subscription to the Downsizer Dispatch, but you have NOT registered to use our Educate the Powerful System to send letters to Congress, then you will need to register. Only people who are registered get to have a Toolbox.
You will see that “Your Downsize DC Toolbox” currently contains four major categories . . .
Your Account:
You can use these functions to edit your email address, your password, and the legal address we use to determine what Congressional district you live in. This is a major improvement. You always had this power, but it was hidden and clunky. Every day people wrote us seeking help. But now . . .
These tools are already functional, so click on them and take a look.
Your Contributions:
You’ll soon have functions here that you can use to track your contributions to Downsize DC, see how you compare to other DC Downsizers, and even alter your monthly pledge whenever you want. You will have complete control.
Your Letters to Congress:
You’ll be able to track how many letters you’ve sent to Congress this month, this year, and since joining. Other kinds of pressure-stats will be added here over time.
Your District:
This is where you’ll see information related to your personal Congressional district. Soon, you’ll not only see how many, or how few, DC Downsizers there are in your area. After that, we’ll also give you a tool for setting goals, and for seeing the goals that people have chosen to pursue in other Congressional districts around the country.
Coming attractions . . .
Now that we have the Toolbox in place, we’ll be making new parts of it functional on a regular basis, plus adding new tools. First on the list will be . . .
Your Outreach Tools:
This is where we’ll put tools you can use to recruit more people to work with you in your district, as well as do things on a national basis.
Several of these tools are already in the works. For instance, we’re creating . . .
Targeted outreach pages:
* These pages will be devoted to individual subjects, like the Read the Bills Act, with none of the distractions people face when they come to our main website.
* These pages will have one focused purpose, and one purpose only, to present an idea and recruit people to work for that idea.
* You’ll be able to use these pages to recruit more people to work for what you want.
Social networking tools:
DC Downsizers have been asking us to add these tools to our website, and it’s just about to happen. But we’re going to be doing it in a special way. Not only will we add the social networking tools everyone is used to seeing, we’re also going to be doing things to make “Your Downsize DC Toolbox” into its own kind of social network.
What do we mean by this? WELL, WE CAN’T DO EVERYTHING AT ONCE, SO STAY TUNED.
Meanwhile . . .
We’ve made it incredibly easy to support DownsizeDCorg. You can start a monthly pledge for as little as ONE DOLLAR. In fact, if we had just a dollar a month from all of our subscribers, we would more than double our funding. So, please consider starting a monthly pledge, for a dollar, or MORE if you can afford it.
We hope you like “Your Downsize DC Toolbox,” the work we’re doing, and our plans for the future. Thank you for your support.
Jim Babka
President
DownsizeDC.org, Inc.