Quote of the Day: “Utopia is not one of the options.” — David Bergland
Subject: November results
November was a good month. We . . .
- Recruited 654 new Downsizers, up 350 from November of last year.
- Sent 27,398 messages to Congress, up 21,075 from the same time in 2007.
In addition, we’ve already covered a huge chunk of our 2009 operating budget of $186,000. We have …
- Top-down pledges from major donors of $10,801
- Bottom-up monthly pledges with an annualized value of $2,020
- Add in our wonderful current monthly pledgers and the promise to finish-off the campaign with $50,000 by two major donors.
- That means we’re ONLY $26,179 away from having all of basic 2009 expenses paid for!
- Nearly every cent above that amount will be focused on OUTREACH and RECRUITMENT
But all is not completely rosy with our scenarios.
Sometimes, because we skimp on our operating costs, things go wrong.
Frankly, we’re fine with that. Perfection is never one of the options. Every decision involves trade-offs. We prefer the trade-off that leaves us with a small staff (only two full-time employees) and low overhead, even if it means that we sometimes make mistakes that wouldn’t have occurred if we’d had more eyes on the problem.
Just such a thing happened last week. Something went wrong with our contribution form. We didn’t notice the problem until this weekend. That means that everyone who wanted to use it last week, when we were making our month-end push, couldn’t. We raised no new contributions towards meeting our budget for November.
We’re still $4,902 shy of making budget for November. We regret the inconvenience we caused those who tried to make donations. We hope you’ll try again. The form IS WORKING NOW.
Obviously, we’d also like to make progress on our Close the Gap campaign. New monthly pledges would help us NOW, as well as to reach our goal to cover all of 2009. Please check out the Close the Gap page to see the “I Am Not Afraid” T-shirt premium and sizes.
On Saturday, we offered a shopping weekend donation discount to get the T-shirt. Every one-time donation of $60 or more qualifies for the T-shirt (normally $76). We’re extending this special offer to midnight, December 2. Please use our Bottom-Up secure contribution form and specify your shirt size in the comments section.
We’ll be back tomorrow with our regularly scheduled programming. And I’m hoping, with your support, we’ll be able to invest this month on focusing aggressively on Congress, rather than on budget concerns.
Thank you so much for being a part of the growing Downsize DC Army.
Jim Babka
President
DownsizeDC.org, Inc.