X-Message-Number: 25931 From: Date: Wed, 30 Mar 2005 11:36:59 EST Subject: Humane Society & cryonics Two clues to public relations: 1. The Humane Society of the U.S. is a charitable animal-welfare organization to which I made a few contributions for a while. I stopped when it became apparent that they spent most of their money on raising money--in other words, on paying their staff. They send frequent requests, along with gifts including such things as umbrellas and T-shirts, and they keep on doing it, and apparently never stop. They have certainly spent more on mailings to me than I have contributed. Obviously, this policy must pay off, on average. And it fits with a well known maxim in the trade--your best prospects are those who have already contributed. 2. Mae subscribed to REASON, the Libertarian magazine. She died more than five years ago, but I still receive the magazine, and requests to renew, every issue. Again, the received wisdom is that old customers are your best bets. So--how to get more out of cryonics organization members? First, you have to ask them to do something specific, and then you keep nagging, but hopefully without becoming obnoxious. And there are indeed things that members can do. The simplest is just to make a periodic extra donation--even $100 a year. Of course you recognize this in some public way, maybe an honor roll or a trinket. Or instead of money, many kinds of work could help. Make a sustained effort--with written reports--to recruit your relatives and friends. Talk it up in chat rooms. Lots of possibilities, but someone has to supervise and coordinate. Robert Ettinger Content-Type: text/html; charset="US-ASCII" [ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=25931