Friday, 18 May 2001

WASHINGTON, D.C.

It has been a great week, and I appreciate having the opportunity to write for Grist. Consolidating my thoughts each morning and writing my daily journal entry has been a good exercise. It’s helped me to focus on my priorities and bring clarity to my work. After all, if I can’t explain what I do and why I do it, how will I ever succeed in motivating others to be concerned and active in the fight to reduce nuclear weapons?

Today I need to give some thought to the logistics behind the June mobilization. Delivering tens of thousands of email messages will be challenging, and I haven’t yet wrapped my brain around how to do it. For example, how many email messages can we fit on one page? Can we reduce the cost (and the amount of paper) by printing them front-to-back? Do we want to bind each packet by state, and if so, how much will this cost? Do we have enough people to deliver all 100 packets (one for each Senator)? Do we need to bring hand trucks to help us deliver these? I have a meeting next week to map it all out. But for now, I need to think through each step and research the costs.

We’re also looking at running a banner ad on a variety of different websites during the coming month. Just because you build a website, it doesn’t mean they will come. We are investing in online marketing to help draw people to our site. Following on the heels of Bush’s new nuclear policy and the confirmation of John Bolton to the top arms-control position in the government, we are using online marketing to capitalize on all the press coverage of this issue.

Online marketing is a whole new world to me, one which I find very interesting. Last year, we recruited tens of thousands of people to join our campaign from an ad we ran with Juno Online Services. In early October, when Juno email users checked their email, a DontBlowIt.org ad appeared, asking people to send e-postcards to Al Gore and George W. Bush to reduce nuclear weapons. We purchased over 250,000 ad impressions, which resulted in over 17,000 Juno users joining the DontBlowIt.org campaign — a response rate of nearly 8 percent. In comparison to the extremely low response rates generated by nonprofits’ direct-mail campaigns, this response rate is phenomenal. However, the jury is still out on whether or not the people we recruit through online marketing will stay active for the long term. This, in part, depends on how well we can engage them over time.

My work will continue to remain pretty busy throughout the summer. After the national mobilization in June, the Pentagon has scheduled another missile defense test. Sometime between the end of June and early July, it will test a single dummy target warhead with a single decoy, using a surrogate booster rocket for the interceptor missile. It would be one thing if the system worked. But to date, there have not been any successful tests of the full missile defense system. Imagine the enormous technical challenges the Pentagon faces. It’s like attempting to hit a bullet with another bullet! We’ll keep our fingers crossed that this test will fail again. It’s just more ammunition we can use to illustrate why National Missile Defense is a flawed system.

Before I close, I want to take a moment and tell you about TechRocks, the fantastic organization that I work for. TechRocks is the only national “dot org” that works in partnership with progressive, citizen-based nonprofit organizations to transform organizing and activism through the strategic deployment of Internet-based technology solutions. This past year, TechRocks worked with over 200 organizations to provide technology planning and assessment, and to help manage major Internet campaigns. TechRocks, partially funded by and a supporting organization to the Rockefeller Family Fund, is a leading social-change organization.

Thanks for sticking with me this week and learning about my work with TechRocks’ nuclear disarmament Internet campaign, www.DontBlowIt.org. For our kids’ future, help make nuclear weapons a thing of the past!