I get them two to three times per week and have for years. Big, thick envelopes packed with colorful materials and, of course, donation forms. It is an excess, plain and simple.
I have to wonder, what does it cost to send all these materials out? I am almost certain they must spend my annual dues several times over to pay for all these. How about one donation request every two weeks, maybe even once per week? Two to three per week is almost insulting, IMHO. And a waste of money that could be going to a better use.
Curious to see if anyone has a different take on this, as I suppose there could be a method to their madness.
I agree. Plus, the donation requests are so panicky, that it gets hard to tell when they’re bringing something really drastic to your attention vs. just general “gun grab” fears.
NRA is marketing and hype, ILA is the action arm. So, in one sense the NRA is not “wasting” money since they really wouldn’t be doing anything else. On the other hand, perhaps some of their funding could be cut and used for the ILA to actually do something.
I actually collected all of the mail I got from the NRA over the course of a one year membership and weighed and photographed it. I’ll try to find the pictures. I expressly didn’t renew so that I could include all the “come on, don’t leave us!” mail as well. It was actually less than I expected to tell the truth, but probably cost more than it should.
That said, and perhaps because I’ve served on the senior staff of a 501(c)4 non-profit advocacy organization with a similar structure, I put up with the torrent of NRA mailings.
As I understand it, the NRA comprises at least three different organizations: the parent NRA, a 501(c)4 non-profit/non-stock corporation; the NRA Foundation, a 501(c)3 non-profit/tax-exempt corporation; and NRA-ILA, the association’s lobbying arm.
Individually and collectively, these organizations and their activities rise and fall with their revenue streams. I suspect that the NRA’s major sources of revenue are member dues, voluntary donations (political or charitable), advertising, and commercial partnerships (sponsorships, etc.).
Tapping two of those sources involves soliciting individuals, thus the mailings – and, presuming that the NRA is doing what works (that is, brings in money), stopping or curtailing the mailings means shutting off or reducing the cash.
This is a great point. The requests have become overly-dramatized and even gimmicky sometimes. Almost like they have targeted simple-minded fools who hopefully have bottomless pockets. I don’t need or want all that nonsense to support them, and I find it to be a turn off.
The can educate and motivate most of us without simple, fear mongering tactics.
You can contact the NRA and ask to be taken off of their mailing list.
that is what i did about 15 years ago, but once in a while they slip up, but that only happens about once every two or three years, i treat their mailings like the comics…, i laugh a lot !!
Yes, and I was on the do not mail list but they still did
My favorite was the one where they swore I was singlehandedly empowering the Liberals and destroying the 2A and how at that very moment they was legislation trying to repeal the 2A altogether(a lie no less) etc;
It’s not the mail itself, so to speak. I put all my junk mail and paper into a recycle bin that gets picked up right in front of my home. No big deal.
It is the excessive expenditures of our money that I would prefer go to a better use. Then there is the air of insatiability that accompanies all those donation requests. Many should just read “Hurry, send more money so we can get more mailers out ASAP!!”.
I also have an issue with how some of the messages are being conveyed on what is really our behalf. LOKNLOD summed it up well in that regard.
Virtually everything that falls under the heading of “a better use” costs money, and that money has to come from somewhere. The tactics used by the NRA – some of them patently tacky and frivolous – apparently work.
Or they’d better be working. If they’re not, now that would be a waste of funds. :rolleyes:
While this may be true, does it still result in a lower profit margin overall than what might be obtained with a more “limited” strategy? I think so, here’s why…
Everyone here unanimously agrees so far that it is too much and often too tacky. If it has that effect here, it is having it elsewhere.
They need to get a grip on reality and stop wasting all that money with simple-minded, wasteful techniques.
I wouldn’t mind getting one mailing a month or so, but there isn’t a week that goes by where I don’t get at least one or more “your contribution could save us all” letter. I can’t imagine anyone who sends cash every time they get a request from the NRA.
I’m sure the NRA could find a more productive way to spend some of the cash that goes into all those mailings. I don’t mind contributing, but I sure can’t do it at the rate they would like!
I think the biggest problem is that they send so much stuff that all mailings get ignored, including notifications for renwals. They even send you notices for renewals before they are due.
Now I admire what they stand for and fully support them, but I can’t help to think that they probably loose a lot of members who do not renew because they wind up discarding everything sent to them.
I know gun control is a serious issue and there is a lot of things happening with it, but I think the NRA and NRA ILA would be better served sending less stuff out, because in the current state I am convinced a lot of it is tossed away–with membership renewal forms tossed away with it.
I agree with this thread. The overhyped, panicky verbiage used in the mailings makes the NRA look just like what the Anti’s say they are. The message seems geared towards the cammo wearing gunshow attendies. I found all of those mailings insulting. The facts are scary enough without them going overboard with the hyperbole. Give me facts, not scare tactics.
Has anyone in this thread actually sent money after reading “The UN is out for your guns!! Send money now so we can defeat these international gungrabbers before it is too late!!!” Reads just like those subscription inserts in the Mack Bolan books.
That it’s wasteful (or inefficient) is plausible but by no means certain. Only the folks doing the NRA’s marketing and solicitations know for sure – and we don’t know what we don’t know.
In my former role with a national non-profit that did a whole lot of mailings, I used to hear this sort of thing every day, and it was unfounded – the cost-benefit of our solicitations was solidly in benefit territory.
Personally, I love efficiency and loathe waste. I just don’t have enough information to know what I’m looking at here.
Maybe, but maybe it’s they who don’t know what they don’t know. Maybe their dopey marketing team is convinced that all current and potential members are just what Lagadelphia describes as “cammo wearing gunshow attendees”.
In other words, simple minded, likely well meaning folks who are easily swayed by the irritating and expensive method. Could there be that many of them out there?
If we can see the ridiculousness of the twice-a-week solicitations so uniformly here, apparently it is real to thinking folks. And there is absolutely something to the fact that with so much solicitation there is the tendency to throw away a real re-newal form. I know I have, but they started sending me them months after I signed up for three years. Let me feel a little appreciated for the duration, will you? :mad:
