A possible promotional actionusing the Journal:

  • Take advantage of having contact information for 12,000+ lapsed members to try to entice them back into membership: Under the rubric of ‘Won’t you come back’ send them 3 or more e-issues gratis. After that use special articles as bait by letting these readers see the first few paragraphs of a couple of articles then send them to our website to become a member in order to see ‘the rest of the story’.
  • The reasoning behind this: I’ve been told by a few members that they really want to get away from all the paper magazines coming into their homes—this is our solution; also, over time the Journal has changed somewhat in content, and perhaps seeing it in color will make a difference to some people.
  • This promotion can only be accomplished well with an impressive full 20-/24-page copy.
  • A 2% positive response for this effort (not unreasonable for past members) would bring in 255 members.

Another possible source of money to cover all phases of the redo of our website and the Journal shortage, are the Foundation Funds. It is my understanding that it is precisely for this sort of action that foundations lend money in this manner. To ignore these funds and to simply pay them back immediately reflects outstandingly short-sightedness and certainly does not justify the Foundation’s evident faith in us. If I were in the position of the donor I certainly would not offer us any more loans, as we clearly don’t have enough faith in ourselves to use them. We might well close up shop now and save ourselves a lot of pain.

Here is a synopsis of problems and solutions regarding delivering the Wild Ones Journal electronically in the year 2010--proposed in an effort to respond to budgetary shortfalls.

  • We have e-mails for about 75% of our members (more or less). Some members have dial-up service and limited skills on computers regarding logging in, finding, retrieving, reading on screen
  • We have no specific plans nor any arrangements to get the Journal to the other 25%. We have some nebulous hope that the chapters will step up and get it to their uncomputered members. We have no means to get to the WOJo to PAL members who don’t have e-mail.
  • The cost of printing and mailing 1000 hard copies is not a significant saving over printing and delivering the usual 3100.
  • The board is reacting only to the budgetary aspects. I have been handed this scenario and told to figure it out (more or less).

My suggested budgetary solution. Which has Chris Nelson’s agreement (contracted website redoer):

  • We need 41000$ (depending on cost changes from last year) to print and deliver 6 copies of the WOJo as usual.

We have these moneys:

In the 2010 budget-for Journal26350

Challenge Donation from a chapter 6000

Challenge response from a chapter 2000

From 13266$ budgeted for website redo 6750

Total which can be used for WOJo41000

My further arguments for doing 6 hard copies of WOJo in 2010:

  • The Journal is the one commodity that every member (PAL and Chapter members)reliably receives from Wild Ones—it is promised to every member who signs on—we will be breaking this contract
  • We have not notified our advertisers about the e-issues. The e-issues will be happening during peak advertising months. We have not dealt with the question of our contract with the advertisers.
  • The website has been in its current condition since forever. The rearrangement of the budget leaves 6516$ for the website redo. Could we not continue ‘in chunks’ on the Website redo—continuing into 2011 budget?—assuming we choose not to use foundation funds.
  • Regarding membership (which is our primary source of income (apart from donations))—we are currently around 2700. We need 3000 members to function (5000 to function comfortably).
  • We cannot afford to loseany members by inconveniencing them with the delivery of the Journal. We cannot attract new members while giving the appearance of being about to close up shop. It will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
  • My assumption is that a consistent Journal is more important at this time of decreasing membership than a more user friendly/updated website. While redesigning the website is very important, it will be irrelevant if we lose members and have to close up shop.
  • A noted politician opined (and he should know): "In the final analysis, elections are not won or lost by programs. They are won or lost on how these programs are presented to the country, and how all the political and public relations considerations are handled." I believe this applies to our scenario.

My suggested course of action toward an electronic Journal:

  • Adopt the modified budget and proceed with delivering 6 hard copies of the Journal
  • Introduce the e-issues over the course of this coming year, giving ourselves time to do this gracefully, finding and working out the kinks beyond the ones that are immediately obvious.
  • Starting with the January/February issue (which has gone out in hard copy) send the members, for whom we have e-mails, an e-version of the Journal too. This will introduce them to the e-version notion and we’ll start working out the kinks. We’ll ask for comments.
  • The method of electronic delivery will be made simple to all concerned. The member/non-member both will receive a URL to access and find the current WOJo waiting for them in all its glory. Keeping track of who took advantage of this would be useful information. We could ask users to immediately e-mail me to give me their reactions. We might also be able to use something called Google event tracker to find out how many hits and (I think) from whom. All of this can be worked out.
  • Continue to do this (hard copy and e-copy) for the rest of the year, all the while requesting feedback and preparing members for going completely electronic in 2011—if possible.
  • Give ourselves time to go electronic without losing any members. This precipitous a action we contemplate of going electronic this year has the taste of a catastrophic response to budgetary short-falls. It is capable of producing catastrophic results—certainly mayhem at the administrative level.

I will do what I can to assist Donna and Jamie in the extra work of tracking and answering the mail from questioners.

Submitted respectfully by:

Maryann Whitman, Journal Editor

Wild Ones: Native Plants, Natural Landscapes