X-Message-Number: 9387 Date: Wed, 1 Apr 1998 21:52:28 -0700 (MST) From: (Dave & Trudy Pizer) Subject: Re: CryoNet #9369 - #9378 A few more thoughts from: Dave Pizer Charles Platt said: >Dave, you're a successful businessman, so you are undoubtedly aware of >the problems that a small business faces when it wants to grow, and >attempts to do so without proper capitalization. It's very easy to say >"growth will bring in more money." But you need more money (and more >people) in order to achieve growth. It's not a trivial problem, >especially since the growth will impose a larger potential burden on >services, and cryonicists get very touchy if the services are not >reliable because they are overburdened. Your letter does not address >these points. If we are "small" it is our fault. We have been around too long to blame anything else. There is potential money in cryonics. Out of a little under 1,000 signed up and funded members, we probably have at least 50 millionares. Several of these have more than 100 million. Many cryoncists have way above average incomes. We in cryonics do not have a compelling way (Plan - organization - workers) of raising money. We don't raise the large sums simply because we don't have very good ways for our wealthy members to donate. We don't have an organized way of raising money for needed projects. Simply put, we are the blame for not rasing more money. If we had a professional fund raising program with projects that we could show would raise the odds of a person's chances for survival, there are many cryonicists who would want to use their money to increase their own odds to survive. But we don't have a good fund raising program in place. We don't have a good membership-growth campaign in place. We just put out our magazines (they are nice - but who is working with chains of distributors to see that new book stores are added eacn issue to sell our magazines?), and we have good membership persons who can handle the needs when a person finds us and wants to sign up, but we don't have a machine to generate more and more new memberships. We are being reactive in membership instead of proactive. We have a good product but we are not doing as good as we could in marketing it. One thing I have learned from being in business all my life, is when things are not going as good as they should the people in charge are usually responsible. Well, we the hard core cryoncists (about 50 of us), are collectively in charge and we are not doing near as well as we could be if we were better organized and had a plan for growth and fund raising, and were willing to put more resource in it. For instance: If each cryoncist brought in one new member in the next year (along with those new-comers who will join on their own) we could double our membership. Just do this for three or four years (new members bring in one per year also) and in s decade we could have tens of thousands of members) There must be a way collective management could bring this about. Some members might not be able to bring in a new members, but other could bring in two or three. If each member contributed $1,500 new dollars per year each on average, (some cannot contribute that much, but other can contribute much more) we could raise an additional one million dollars per year. If we parlay this type of fundraising with the above membership growth, in a few years we would be raising many millions per year. There are groups (that start with less resources than we have) that do this. These numbers are not unrealistic in terms of what our members have and the things they want to see done. But they are unrealistic in thinking we can do this, if we don't even try. A ten year, unified, membership membership and fundraising campaign might make the difference in our survival. But right now we (collectively) are not well orgainzed or trained in these ares. It doesn't have to remain like this. Olaf Henny said: > >I think I can supply another, very strong reason, why people tend >to drop out, particularly when they get close to the end: When >we are completely exhausted, as we all will be just before we die >a "natural death" most of us do not care if we live or die. We >most of all want to be left alone and not bother. I have become aware of MANY (in comparison to how few people there are in cryoincs) cases where this has happened. Many cases where long-time cryonicists got old and/or sick and changed their minds and did not get frozen or did not do things that helped them get near as good of suspension as they could have. I think one of the most important things we should do is create a cryonics community where people can come and retire when they get older (or if they get sick) and live among other cryonicists that will help them keep their enthusiasm for cryonics up. -------- If *we* don't create a cryonics community, and create a highly successful membership program, and create a powerful fundraising campaign that allows those members who want to put their money where it might save their lives, then *we* must go to the mirror and tell ourselves that *we* are to blame, not world conditions, and other excuses. If we don't do everything that can be done, and our attempt fails because of that, *we* must accept the full blame. Of course we will be dead so we can't be blamed if we don't exist. Its time we started discussions with ideas and suggestions on how to get these things done, instead of all the talk on why it can't (or hasn't been in the past) be done. Dave Pizer Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=9387