I start this post with a picture of a communications tower in a field in the middle of nowhere… because that communications tower in rural America is getting greater reach with all of its signaling capabilities than this fledgling nonprofit.
We’re a brand-new organization (backstory here), and we need to up our game. We’ll need your help.
We’re set up to help Americans counter authoritarianism, to navigate the unfolding chaos before us, to help hold this democracy together, and to change this country’s trajectory while we’re at it.
We’re not aware of any other groups set up to do all that — so we think it’s important to grow. Seems like critical stuff that could help our present and our future.
What’s Next?
I got a personal message from a Facebook friend today asking if I was okay since I hadn’t been on social media much recently. I so appreciate that. We need people, and we need to look out for each other. Connection is Thing 1 in our 5-part approach for a reason.
I’m usually on social media more, and I haven’t been lately for a few reasons. One of them is that my health has still been wonky, even though it’s been a month since it took a nosedive after an emergency. I thought I might be feeling more normal faster, but everything is still a bit weird… and I’m not as productive as I’d like. Needing more sleep, having trouble focusing, and so on. This is a bigger health challenge than I expected it would be.
The other big reason I’ve been offline is because I’ve been trying to figure out what to do next with this nonprofit.
Step 1 is to keep you all up to speed with what’s going on, so here goes…
We need help. Here are options as we all get started ramping this up.
We need more people involved. How to get there is a bit of a challenge. Ideally, we’ll have Zoom conversations online with folks on the different parts of this work (for example, like how we can pressure more businesses at scale), and how we can ramp this shift up and get it going. I can’t do that by myself, and neither can our tiny board.
The cool thing: This nonprofit is brand-new. What we pull off between now and the 2024 election to get Americans energized will be largely dependent on who shows up to volunteer, and on the direction we collectively decide to go in — together. Should be interesting. We’re going to do seriously amazing stuff that we haven’t even thought of yet. The more brains the better. :)
We need you… and the people you’re connected to, too. People are fired up everywhere and looking for ways to make a difference. We just need to find more of them.
It’s teamwork. We’ll start by getting a bigger team or a bunch of teams. I’ll be doing some individual outreach to recruit people on this based on notes of interest here and there, and also following up with people who have signed up to volunteer. Signing up will be helpful, as we’re starting to get a lot of data.
About Zoom events — I went a bit overboard right before the holidays and again in January setting up a boatload of online events… but got hardly any sign-ups. I suspect that’s because our reach isn’t huge, because we offered too many events, because people are overwhelmed, and because it’s the post-holiday winter. I’ll be setting up a few Zoom calls for a week or two out from now… so we have time to recruit and get better input and participation (thus no event links today).
We need greater reach. Our reach now is basically this Substack (~500 subscribers, with ~200 active readers), our Facebook Page, the new social media called Post, and LinkedIn (with more traffic on my personal wall there). Shares you make to groups, family, friends, and organizations help us grow that.
We need more funding to help extend our reach, and for other things like renewing our website domain names (next week) and keeping up our infrastructure. We’re approved to run Facebook ads to drive traffic to events or to other things we decide to push or promote, so as we get enough funding we can run ads.
Last week I did a personal post on social media asking for funding help. I’ve been touched and blown away by the response. I’m deeply grateful. We have such great and supportive people already involved. As we grow this, we’ll get more — and that will help make it more sustainable.
Other things: We could use volunteer help editing (and maybe producing) videos in the next few weeks. We might need more board members. We’ll have to decide here very shortly, as our required annual board meeting is coming up (organizational story here). We’ll need a nonprofit accountant to help us file taxes prior to May 15 (ideally qualified to file in Iowa). We’re also looking for larger funders for a Democratic-party-leaning 501(c)(4); if you’ve got ideas. We’d like to start a podcast as funds increase and will need help with that when we get to it.
What’s the Big Idea Here, Anyway?
If you'd like more on what this nonprofit is all about, the simplest scoop is to see the website and the 5 Things that make up our approach. Those are:
Thing 3: Involve Businesses Through Partnerships & Pressure.
Thing 5: Drive the Narrative, Create a Buzz, & Spread It Everywhere.
I think we’ll also spend a bit of time over the next few weeks on sharing the vision of what this can do and be, too, to help with everything we’re trying to ramp up.
Good enough for today! Keep the faith — in each other, and in this democracy.
And then let’s change it’s trajectory. We damn well can.
Lots to ponder here! Of course I want to be involved. I just haven't figured out how best to do that or what I can contribute. I note that you now have 500 Substack subscribers--and 200 active readers. Woo hoo! That is awesome! So why don't your posts generate more interaction? I am often the only person, or one of two people, who comments. You get lots of traction on Facebook; gotta figure out how to transfer that here... In the meantime, don't stop telling the "organizing" story; I think it will help to engage more people. And please, given all that you have been dealing with medically, don't push yourself too hard. Ask for help--even if you need to do it on Facebook to get responses.