March Equinox Appeal
Dear Bright
Will you please aid the Brights’ initiative by making a donation today?
You can help us to educate more fully about the naturalistic worldview.
You can help us to promote more widely the civic aims and principles through the website, our new BloggingBrights.net, and through social media channels.
You can help us to maintain our international forums, enhance educational aspects of the website, issue more BrightenOps (action opportunities), connect more Brights with one another (in regions), and answer queries.
You can help us in our endeavor to gain acceptance and respect for the people who hold outlooks free of supernatural and mystical encumbrances.
Please donate to support The Brights' Network. Thank you!
http://www.the-brights.net/funding/supportbrights/
Are you just thinking about it? Let’s supply a few reasons to consider, and we hope you will decide to contribute and continue to support our efforts.
FIRST — How The Brights’ Net Is Unique
- It is set up as a constituency of individuals.
(All registrants have in common is a naturalistic worldview, free of supernatural/mystical elements.) - Every participant in the movement keeps his/her personal beliefs.
(There’s no dogma, no common manifestos to sign onto, no need to endlessly parse philosophy.) - The network is just about as grassroots as it gets.
(No board of directors is taking public positions on your behalf.) - Actions taken by Brights are theirs to do, but the idea is that individuals will be guided in their actions by the stated aims and principles of the movement.
Please remember that Brights don’t pay membership fees or dues like most related nonprofit organizations. Yet, the necessity for support is still present. We depend entirely on donations from constituents. The backing of each and every Bright would surely go a long ways to sustain the hub of communications and enable activities to benefit all the Brights in the constituency!
SECOND — Where Donated Funds Are Going
While Brights themselves engage in activities as they choose to benefit the movement (paying out of pocket for what they do), the “management” of the Brights’ operation keeps the machinery going. So, what’s the Equinox funding request for? Here's a glimpse:
Under volunteer leadership, The Brights’ Net rents a “central headquarters” office in a small business building. From there, we continuously operate and upgrade the educational aspects of the website/database along with part-time employees (webmaster, office assistant), professional support services (payroll, database, etc.). From there, we also manage the legal nonprofit 501(c)(3) “public benefit educational organization,” The Brights’ Net, which must perform certain functions and meet certain requirements under the guidance of an unpaid board in order to accept tax-deductible financial support. This enables steady grassroots changes in which you can make a real difference.
How Much? Well, let’s start with twenty-five thousand dollars for the central hub. It is not a massive request, but you should know that it is the amount needed to sustain the main central operations and communications. The founding “crew of two” (in a 100% volunteer capacity) along with part-time staff coordinate with some dedicated volunteers in other locations (managing the international forums, cooperating with other freethought organizations, translating languages, running a prisoners program, etc.)
THIRD— What Else?
Added generosity from constituents (more than the minimal sustaining amount, of course) can enable collaborative projects to move forward.
For example, we want to take another step forward with the morality project under a new project director. We'd like to employ a coordinator to more fully engage social media and assist in regional action support. We want to prepare videos and information graphics. (A 2012 Reason Rally promotional video was done primarily by volunteer efforts.)
If a financial donation is simply not possible right now, then please in the next six months pursue other ways to help. (A listing of suggestions follows the Equinox Appeal link below..)
We take great pleasure when a new registrant’s comment is “a friend (or a relative, co-worker, professor, student, spouse ) told me about the Brights,” so you can help every time you invite more people to visit the website and learn of this civic justice endeavor on behalf of individuals who live their lives free of supernatural beliefs.
With or without a financial contribution, we appreciate your commitment to the Brights nonprofit organization. We are also very grateful for the many personal emails expressing encouragement and confidence in our efforts and the efforts of Brights across the world.
Please donate to support The Brights' Network. Thank you!
http://www.the-brights.net/funding/supportbrights/
Plan for Other Ways to Help?
Now (at the Equinox) is a good time to look back as a Bright at the past six months and recall how you have personally contributed to forward movement on any of the aims of the Brights initiative, and then also, to look ahead and add a new way to help.
We anticipate that there are countless ways you have supported the fundamentals of this initiative – directly or indirectly – since the last equinox letter. Here are a few ways we are aware of that Brights in the constituency have been helping directly, and these may give you ideas :
- Signifying that you have a naturalistic worldview as appropriate occasions arise, and when engaging in conversations with others, doing so in constructive ways likely to elevate civic harmony
- Facilitating (moderating) online forums to benefit the constituency so that other Brights can participate in international discussions of issues and concerns
- Expending time and money to be present at the Reason Rally in DC (Some of you even planned for and staffed our booth, designing and producing the displays and materials.)
- Responding to one or more “BrightenOps” (action opportunities) we have sent to your region, spurring you to attend an event or write a letter to the editor or post on a forum or otherwise to exemplify a constructive example of civic engagement
- Acquiring a Brights decal or T-shirt or bookmark or other merchandise to use to help spread awareness of the Brights movement when attending events
- Volunteering time or talents, such as applying your graphic or media skills to help Brights Central produce a website image or video, or critiquing material that BC has put online
- Providing content for the website or for material we are publishing
- Conveying relevant research results, or events, or local tribulations and challenges (items that Brights Central can share further or more broadly with constituents)
- Aiding financially with a donation or in other less direct ways, such as by using links on the website home page when buying merchandise, thereby earning a small commission for the organization
Whatever you may have done recently to help out, we’d like to say “Thank you!” and hope you’ll stay involved and actively participating in this constituency.
If you know you really could be doing more for the Brights movement than you’ve been doing, or did in the past, then we’d like to ask for financial support at this time.
The world definitely needs more Brights (of all stripes) out and about and increasingly serving in key capacities in education and government; in fact, everywhere! And that's a sure-fire motivator for all of us engaging in The Brights' Network.
Please donate to support The Brights' Network. Thank you!
http://www.the-brights.net/funding/supportbrights/
Renewing Our Pledge to All Brights
We will be focused on the purposes and principles stated on the website and will continue to resolutely work toward them as time and resources permit.
Paul Geisert and Mynga Futrell
Co-Founders of The Brights' Network
The general work of the Brights’ nonprofit organization is sustained by the generosity of registered constituents. Your contribution today will keep us moving forward tomorrow. Thank you!
