Recruitment drive!

Also make sure you mention it to people who you give the newspaper to who are really interested and additionally make sure to direct people when sharing articles on line to the slaneystreet.com/join/ page

Is there anyway people could do direct debit instead? Paypal sucks so much money for itself!

not at the moment. becuase of the large committee and lack of proper constitution we were unable to create a bank account. hopefully we will be able to rectify that at the conference by thinking of a better structure etc and making sure we get everyones details etc.

paypal is it for now :S

Just about to send this email out in the next half hour any edits? :

Hi,

I'm just getting in contact with you, to ask you to become a member of Slaney Street, Birmingham's growing local media co-operative - Currently we have 35 members and have printed 6 editions. Over the past year we've distributed around 35,000 newspapers in Birmingham and had over 30k views on our online blog. Our last edition was distributed completely with a large number of them going through the doors of every house in selly park, selly oak and Stirchley.

In our last edition we had an expose on the next round of cuts being initiated by Birmingham City Council, an article by Bijli, a womens group in north birmingham focussing on gender violence, an article about OPEL a group of people in Aston attempting to buy a co-operative banqueting hall for the black community in Aston and an article about the amazing Focus E15 mothers in London amongst a whole host of others.

We are run democratically by an elected editorial board held to account at general meetings and regular members meetings which are open to all members. Although it is possible to run the blog very cheaply we are reliant on the support of our members to continue being able to print newspapers.

We receive no official funding or support, yet have managed to create a succesful local media outlet that reaches far beyond the usual circles of the Birmingham left and it's associates. Read more about us and the hope for local independent media in this article in Red Pepper: http://www.redpepper.org.uk/slaney-street-birminghams-new-co-operative-media-project/

Currently our income is derived from two sources, we receive around £150 in advertising costs for each edition, we have recently just upped our advertising cost to £70 for a half page, but this still falls far short of the amount we need to do a print run.
We receive around £200 per month from our 35 members, but a print run of 10,000 papers costs £735, so we still fall far short of our goal meaning we are only able to print bi monthly and still have no additional funding to do things like hire rooms for meetings, put on workshops or print posters to invite articles. We desperately need additonal funding, members and participation along with content! so please don't hesitate to support us and become a part of your local media.

Joining is incredibly easy to do via paypal, and there is a sliding scale of rates £3 for unwaged, £4 students, £5 wages and £10 Solidarity. www.slaneystreet.com/join/

We are now up to 39 members with just a couple hours of badgering from me and helena (mainly helena)- can people please make an effort to ask in their networks for people to sign up? we still only receive £183 a month from our members which is far short of being able to afford a bimonthly print run - and we also have at least £220 of debt to repay Edd (and probably some to me from the last edition once I work it out)

At the Left Unity meeting last Saturday, John Goss complained that he had paid a sub to Slaney, but had never had an email or an acknowledgment in return. Can someone look into that?

He should have recieved the one I sent out when the last edition went out. Maybe his sub has bounced or something? I´ve had my laptop stolen so can´t chase it up now but someone else could have a look at it forward that last email to him along with an apology. We should have monthly emails going out though I reckon.

Good idea.