Today’s Downsizer Dispatch . . .
Quote of the Day:
“The difference between salad and garbage is timing.”
— Dan Kennedy
Subject: Salad vs. Garbage
The above quote is worth stressing: “The difference between salad and garbage is timing.” One moment you have a salad, full of ripe and tasty potential, but wait too long to eat it and all you’ll have is garbage.
We want to serve you a beautiful salad. We want to avoid it becoming garbage. Timing is the key.
Do you want our salad? Consider our proposed ingredients . . .
* A heaping helping of Congressional unhappiness, because of too much pressure from constituents.
* A whole lot of people agreeing with you.
* Your ideas dominating the public debate.
We’ve added some more of these ingredients to our salad in August . . .
* We’ve so far recruited 1,436 MORE new Downsizers than we had as of this time last year — our recruitment pace is accelerating.
* We’ve so far sent 114,516 MORE messages to Congress than we had as of this time last year — our pressure on Congress is also accelerating.
Extrapolate the trend — if we keep on keeping on we’ll deliver the full-fledged version of the salad described above. Uhm, tasty.
Plus, we also have in our kitchen, as of this moment . . .
* A 95% complete website redesign (yes, finally)
* A 99% complete “One Subject at a Time Act” (yes, finally)
Everything takes longer and costs more, and so it was with these projects. But we’re about to add them to our salad, and once we do, other things will become possible . . .
For one thing, we need to start lobbying the media, just like we lobby Congress. And with your help we’ll soon start working on that. But . . .
The difference between salad and garbage is timing.
In spite of our continued growth, the timing, or times, are against us right now. Months from now that will not be so. But it is so now, and we understand why.
Our best supporters have their attention turned elsewhere for a while. We understand that, and we even approve of it. Am I being cryptic? Yes, I am. The tax laws and the legal non-partisan nature of this organization require me to be cryptic. So much for free speech.
But I think you know what I’m talking about, even if I can’t say it in so many words.
The combination of vacations in August (almost always a bad month for us), and this special thing I can’t be explicit about, is threatening to turn our beautiful salad into garbage. In short — we fell short — of our August fundraising need, by almost $5,000. Now . . .
That’s not a lot of money for most organizations. In fact, it amounts to about two maximum contributions to a political campaign. But it’s a crucial amount of money to us. It could be the difference between salad and garbage, between continued success and sudden failure.
Things won’t be so tight a few months from now, but timing is everything, and we have no magic power to fast-forward the calendar to reach our salad days. We are where we are, and it is what it is.
I need your immediate help to keep our doors open (which isn’t something I’ve had to say for a long, long time). I hope you understand and can help. If your comment is off-topic for this post, please email us at feedback@downsizedc.org