That’s how a January 12 newsletter by the SWP supporters’ financial steering committee addressed to the party’s monthly contributors begins. The committee is based in Seattle and is made up of Scott Breen, Sara Gates, and Pat O’Reilly.

SWP supporters adopted this goal in July 2003, after exceeding the $300,000 they had set to raise for the period from August 2002 to July 2003.

In cities across the United States, SWP supporters collect regular monthly pledges, record them in an electronic database, and mail them to Seattle. Here, the financial steering committee verifies the checks received, prepares and makes the deposits, and sends the funds to the SWP national office in monthly installments. The committee also sends out a monthly newsletter to supporters reporting on the status of the campaign.

“Our labors resulted in the steady, consistent, dependable collection and transfer of an average of $26,551 monthly to the SWP National Office—just as we promised,” the latest newsletter states. “Out of the 12 months of 2004, we met our $26,250 monthly goal eight times. In the course of this national campaign, there were 92 contributor pledge raises totaling $1,502, and 42 new contributors joined us, adding $1,365. These successfully offset pledge drops and people who stopped regular monthly contributions. Several areas established financial committees to help organize the reach out and collection work of supporters’ groups, bolstering our fund-raising efforts. All of these were necessary to win this victory.”

The last two weeks of the effort the steering committee sent a daily e-mail to local financial directors and committees. The e-mail included a daily running total of funds posted to the database, checks received in Seattle, and checks still outstanding. Many local supporters’ groups went the extra mile to collect pledges at the last minute and send them special delivery overnight mail to compensate for the holiday delays. This final push helped assure that the total donations went over the top. But the achievement was mainly due to being on course all year long.

“The successful campaign to raise $315,000 in 2004 organized by Socialist Workers Party supporters is a big victory and a big boost to building the communist movement,” said SWP leader Dave Prince in a note to the steering committee. “We salute your effort. The party budgeted in the income every month and contributors made sure their generous pledges arrived each month as promised—an essential part of enabling the SWP to respond in a timely way to political developments as they have unfolded over the last year. Based on the results we can look forward with confidence to budgeting these contributions for our work in 2005.”

Those interested in becoming regular contributors to the SWP can contact party supporters in their area (see directory of local distributors).  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home