October 2000

Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC.

It's Not Called 'Organizing' for Nothing: An Editor's Impassioned Plea

There are some tasks that are fundamental to almost any endeavor, whether political or spiritual, informal or official. Admit it: when you are just getting involved with a project, don't your shoulders relax a little if you learn that the group in charge already has:

A sane, experienced leader?

An artist (or at least someone who can write big letters in a straight line)?

A person with a truck?

Your list may go on, and it should. It's important to recognize the very tangible factors that make our work go as well as it does. Not least, this is so that we can know what to look for when things don't go well -- when even our best efforts seem mired in what an Italian colleague of mine once called "patheticism."

But your list may get pretty long before you think to include "An editor," and indeed that is precisely my point -- your list may quickly get to be so long as to become entirely useless, in spite of your ephemeral fondness for every single item on it. That's why "An editor" should be at the top of that list, and why an editor is who you should hand the whole thing to when you're done. Before you make dozens of copies and especially before you send it out over the Internet.

I know that it seems like a waste of precious time to go over things a couple of times before we send them out, while the bombs are dropping and the legislators are voting. And I know that there is so much vital background information on any powerful topic that to leave any of it out may cause headaches and shortness of breath. And, finally, I know that doing things right is a pain in the ass. It takes time to follow up and get the details for a flyer right, to check references or facts for an article, to give an author the chance to read over an abridged version of her work. The Internet helps, but some phone calls during business hours are unavoidable, and many of us don't do this work during business hours. I know it's all hard, and often ungratifying. But do it anyway.

When we succumb to hastiness and inexactitude in our written materials, it is a sign that we have internalized our culture's stereotype of progressives as sloppy, ascetic, and doomed. By contrast, when we treat everything we say with care, we show respect for ourselves, for our work, and for the people we hope to reach.

The Six Habits of Highly Effective Announcements

Thinking about the serious problems in our society and how to solve them is hard and emotionally demanding work, and that's what you are asking people to do every time you invite them to get involved in the causes that are important to you. So give them some respect by making your invitation clear, timely, and concise. Observe these simple rules, and ponder their deep implications while you stand by the copy machine.

1) Think Globally: Especially in the age of the Internet, you can reasonably hope that your little listing will travel to places you yourself have never even heard of. This is good. Even folks who can't come visit might be inspired by your work, tell you about their own related efforts, invite you to their conference, give you space in their publication, or write you a check. Make it easy for them! Include full contact information with everything you put out: mailing address, Email and web addresses, and phone number with area code.

2) Treat Everything as Outreach: If you would like to attract people who don't already know about you and the causes you care about--which is, after all, the point--then help them out! Spell everything fully at least once before you resort to acronyms. Give your event a name, and make it a snappy one. Develop a one- or two-sentence description of the speaker or the relevant issue and use it in all your publicity. Include full contact information with everything you put out (see above)--don't assume you already know everyone who's interested or that they already know you.

3) Show Some Respect: If you start to squirm when someone takes fifteen minutes at the end of a meeting to make a simple announcement, you should think twice about sending out a written announcement that takes fifteen minutes to read. Remember that on every single lefty's desk (or desktop) it reaches, your notice is one of several equally urgent ones received just that day. Put the lengthy exhortations, background information, and speakers' credentials after the succinct, all-the-essentials-at-a-glance summary. This will make it much more likely that newsletters and magazines will pick up your listing, and also that they will get the details right when they do.

4) Be Bold: Readers have the right to know, up front, how the group that answers for an event or resource describes itself. Some publications and organizations have a very sensible policy of not running any announcement for an event or resource without also listing a sponsor. Put the full name of at least one sponsoring group on every announcement--not just an individual contact.

5) Hand it Over: No matter how many times you went over it last night, when you think you are done you must hand your announcement off to someone else, preferably during daylight--and don't hover. This person will sit down with a pen and take plenty of time to check your announcement very closely for: date, time, location, typos (always run the spellchecker but it won't catch everything), cost, contact information (see Rule #1), and goofy formatting choices. This person will point out every tiny thing that might possibly be wrong, because it is worth a little trouble not to make a dumb mistake.

6) Use That Fancy Datebook: In order to give your notice time to propagate, send it out two months in advance of the event date or registration deadline. The trick is to work backwards from the target date, and to think realistically about the schedules of the publications you hope will run your announcement. For example, if your event is in the first half of September, you want people to know about it by the end of August; but the submission deadline for the August issue of any monthly publication was back in late July. You can always send out brief, "save-the-date" notices for this purpose, even if you don't have all the luscious details that you will put into a later mailing.

--Sara Burke

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