23.968, Fund: Show: your support for the LINGUIST List in Fun Drive 2012!

Mon Feb 27 05:12:52 UTC 2012

LINGUIST List: Vol-23-968. Mon Feb 27 2012. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 23.968, Fund: Show: your support for the LINGUIST List in Fun Drive 2012!

Moderators: Anthony Aristar, Eastern Michigan U <aristar at linguistlist.org>
            Helen Aristar-Dry, Eastern Michigan U <hdry at linguistlist.org>

Reviews: Veronika Drake, U of Wisconsin-Madison
Monica Macaulay, U of Wisconsin-Madison
Rajiv Rao, U of Wisconsin-Madison
Joseph Salmons, U of Wisconsin-Madison
Anja Wanner, U of Wisconsin-Madison
       <reviews at linguistlist.org>

Homepage: http://linguistlist.org

The LINGUIST List is funded by Eastern Michigan University,
and donations from subscribers and publishers.

Editor for this issue: Matthew Lahrman <matt at linguistlist.org>
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1)
Date: 27-Feb-2012
From:  linguist [linguist at linguistlist.org]
Subject: Help us kick off another great Fund Drive year!

-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2012 00:11:52
From:  linguist [linguist at linguistlist.org]
Subject: Help us kick off another great Fund Drive year!

E-mail this message to a friend:
http://linguistlist.org/issues/emailmessage/verification.cfm?iss=23-968.html&submissionid=4541525&topicid=121&msgnumber=1

Dear Subscribers,
This is (joke!) my favorite time of year--when I get to ask all my friends and professional acquaintances for money, when everyone ducks around corners as soon as they see me coming, and when the only comment I hear about LINGUIST List is, "Why are you sending out so many Fund Drive messages?"
Well, that's easy:  LINGUIST List has to have an annual Fund Drive in order to support the services you rely on.  And we need to send out so many Fund Drive letters because it usually takes a lot of reminders, contests, jokes, challenges, and exhortations to collect the amount we need from our readership.   Last year. . . and the year before that. . . and the year before that. . . it took us 8 weeks and over 100 Fund Drive messages to make our goal of $67,000. 

But maybe this year could be different. Maybe this year those of you who value LINGUIST List could simply donate TODAY. 

What if 650 people each gave $100?   Or 1300 people each gave $50--and gave it TODAY?   Could we possibly begin and end Fund Drive in a single day?
Sounds like a pipe dream, doesn't it?  But logically it's possible.  The LINGUIST List website receives 150,000 page views per week.  That's over 6 million views per year.  If only 1/30 of our weekly visitors donated $50 today, we would reach our goal.   That's one-THIRTIETH, note--not one-third--of our weekly site visitors.   
And that doesn't count the 27,000 people who subscribe to the email list and perhaps never visit the site.  If only 1/415 of the people reading this message would donate $100 each, we could end Fund Drive today.   

So what would we at LINGUIST do with our extra time--besides smile a lot?  Well, instead of spending two solid months begging for money, we would finish some exciting new services 2 months sooner:
-	We're almost ready to go live with a Summer School Register that we hope will be very useful both to prospective students and to the institutions running summer schools.
-	We're about to unveil a conference registration system, called EasyReg to pair with our highly successful abstracts review service EasyAbs.
-	Thanks to Damir Cavar, we're almost ready to present a text-mining tool that will allow you to search all LINGUIST issues, and perhaps all 150 of the language-related email lists archived on our site.
-	We're planning a Project's Registry where PIs can publicize new projects and services

In addition, in two months we could add approximately 60 maps to the 700 language maps already available on LL-MAP, we could review 100 sources to add to the Endangered Languages catalog, we could revise the publications search, and we could make the Reviews process more efficient.
Wouldn't you rather have these services than 150 Fund Drive letters?  If so, please donate TODAY, giving whatever  you can.  Where I live (Michigan),  $50  is 10  Frappucinos, or 4 movie tickets, or 3 weeks of the New York Times.   I realize this is a bad year economically for most of us (it is for LINGUIST List as well).  But many of us could still give the equivalent of a few Frappucinos.    If you are one of these people, could you please donate $50 TODAY?
This is the letter intended to open the 2012 LINGUIST List Fund Drive.   It would make me deliriously happy (and save a lot of my friendships) if we could make it the letter to end Fund Drive as well.

With sincere thanks for your continuing support,
-Helen

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This Year the LINGUIST List hopes to raise $67,000. This money will go to help 
keep the List running by supporting all of our Student Editors for the coming
year.

See below for donation instructions, and don't forget to check out Fund 
Drive 2012 site!

http://linguistlist.org/fund-drive/2012/

There are many ways to donate to LINGUIST!

You can donate right now using our secure credit card form at  
https://linguistlist.org/donation/donate/donate1.cfm

Alternatively you can also pledge right now and pay later. To do so, go to: 
https://linguistlist.org/donation/pledge/pledge1.cfm

For all information on donating and pledging, including information on how to 
donate by check, money order, or wire transfer, please visit: 
http://linguistlist.org/donation/

The LINGUIST List is under the umbrella of Eastern Michigan University and as 
such can receive donations through the EMU Foundation, which is a registered 
501(c) Non Profit organization. Our Federal Tax number is 38-6005986. These 
donations can be offset against your federal and sometimes your state tax
return (U.S. tax payers only). For more information visit the IRS Web-Site,
or contact your financial advisor.

Many companies also offer a gift matching program, such that they will match 
any gift you make to a non-profit organization. Normally this entails your 
contacting your human resources department and sending us a form that the 
EMU Foundation fills in and returns to your employer. This is generally a
simple administrative procedure that doubles the value of your gift to
LINGUIST, without costing you an extra penny. Please take a moment to check if
your company operates such a program.

Thank you very much for your support of LINGUIST!

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LINGUIST List: Vol-23-968	
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