The CatholiCity Message
Volume II, Number 33 – August 10, 2000
Dear CatholiCity Citizen,
Our staff just prayed, tears in our eyes. We begged the Holy Spirit and Immaculate Mary to co-write this Message. May the following words pierce your heart with a sword.
The fate of CatholiCity will be decided by your response to today's CatholiCity Message. You have ten days to respond. CatholiCity doesn't have enough money to pay our full-time workers beyond November 1st, 1998. Unless the majority of you respond generously, three of our workers will need time to find other jobs. Without them, our website will have to shut down.
It costs $7500 to keep CatholiCity online per month. We have some income from the handful of you who send us donations, so we are losing $6000 every month. CatholiCity will go offline on November 1st...
Unless...
...the vast majority of the 10,000 people receiving today's message send us a donation in the next ten days–enough to ensure that CatholiCity will not continue to run in a deficit. We need $42,000 to last another 8 months beyond November. Your response needs to be fast, and overwhelming.
If you leave the fate of CatholiCity in the hands of "everyone else" reading this message, CatholiCity will surely die as a living, breathing online city. It will become just another "static" site. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of souls who might have received grace through CatholiCity will not do so in the future. Thus, our tears. We're just an average Catholics like the rest of you, but our souls cry out for souls. Souls! The words are blurry on the screen though tears. (A minute or two later...)
This is our last chance. We hate to put it that way. Most of you pay around $240 per year to gain access to the Internet. Most of you can easily afford the $8 each per year it would take to keep us online. Most of you can afford $8 per month. Others can send us hundreds, even thousands of dollars. You each know your own financial circumstances. You each know what you would have to give up to help us. For some of you, it's a snowmobile or outdoor deck or something. For others, it's a bottle of Gatorade or Blockbuster video per week.
Please, do not respond to us today by sending an email. We need cash, not emails. If we can't pay our staff and one intern a just wage because there is no money in the CatholiCity bank account, the decision is out of our hands.
Instead, please respond by going to our online credit card donation page, say a prayer, and send us what we need: financial support.
ONLINE: https://secure.catholicity.com/donation.html
You now have the option of checking off a box to make your donation "automatic" on a monthly basis. (Our thanks go to a CatholiCity Citizen who urged us to program this option last week.)
Or, please write a check, make it out to "CatholiCity" and send it to:
CatholiCityPO Box 26101
Fairview Park, OH 44126
This is our last chance. Over a year ago, we came within weeks of closing down CatholiCity. We asked for your prayers. We asked you to join 54 Day Rosary novenas. We cut our staff from four down to two (overworked) full-timers. With much of the "construction" phase done, we were able to slash our expenses in half. We cancelled virtually all new construction to "save" the best services. We called this Operation Treadwater. For those of you who were with us then, we kept you updated every few weeks on our progress.
Now we are drowning.
Last year, we took your advice and it worked. We took your advice and gave you the ability to make credit card donations online. Some of you responded.
Now we're taking the advice many of you gave us and are directly asking you to keep CatholiCity online. We can make this request only one time.
Is CatholiCity worth the cost of two six-packs of Coke per year? If you cannot afford that, then pray that others can.
Through CatholiCity, Catholics around the world have access to:
- A free CatholiCity Message from a goofy Catholic perspective.
- 24 Hour response to 99% of email inquiries.
- Maximum T1 Fiber Optic bandwidth.
- Scores of screened Best Catholic Links organizations.
- Online apostolates like McCloskey's Perspectives.
- Online services like Catholic Newswire.
- Instant access to free Catholic CDs, tapes, and novels.
- Discounts exclusively for CatholiCity Citizens.
And much more. Here is what our friends and workers say:
@ Our director of interactive services said: "Don't worry about me. I can find another job. Tell the citizens it would be unfortunate if the Internet, which is filled with so much evil stuff, would lose one of the few comprehensive, faithful Catholic sites. CatholiCity is an oasis of water in a desert."
@ Our webmaster and staff theologian told me: "I'm willing to do anything to help keep CatholiCity online. We are helping Jesus save souls."
@ Our first webmaster and current consultant: "We never wanted to send an email like this, but I think it's a good thing that we've come to this point. I want people to "buy shares" in CatholiCity. When people put their money where their mouth is, they love it all the more, and feel like they're really supporting the city. It's like buying stock."
@ One of the wives of a staff said: "The people who use CatholiCity didn't pay for the quarter of million dollars worth of construction it took to build it. Last year, we ended the construction phase and kept the maintenance and administrative workers. Nobody expects a real city to function without taxes. Taxes keep a city clean, well-policed, safe, and ensure the city services are delivered promptly and professionally. Unlike a secular city, CatholiCity has volunteer taxation, and that is insurance against bloating and inefficiency. If the citizens don't want to donate even a nominal $10 or $25 per year to cover CatholiCity services when they pay $240 a year to get on the Internet, then it's our fault for thinking they would when we started CatholiCity. There is no Utopia, even online."
@ Another well-known apostolic leader, who has been skeptical about CatholiCity from the start, who wishes to remain anonymous, told us two days ago: "Catholics are notorious for being cheap. You know–throw a dollar in the basket and that's it. They won't realize what they had in CatholiCity until it's gone."
We told him that we would never believe that. We told him that devout Catholics are the most generous people on earth. Seven years of apostolic work at the Mary Foundation seemed to prove us right. Three grueling years at CatholiCity seem to prove him right.
Prove him wrong.
10,000 people get this CatholiCity Message and there have been over 240,000 visits to our homepage and almost 250,000 visits to our our main services, but only 380 individuals have ever given a donation to CatholiCity since 1996. "Free Will Donation" links are on every major page. Instructions on how to send a donation to CatholiCity are on the bottom of every CatholiCity Message. 380!!
Prove him wrong.
@ A CatholiCity Citizen who has been with us from Day One, and in fact is the first person we've ever talked to in a Chat Room, emailed us last week: "I like what you're going to tell the other citizens. Be direct. Give them one last chance."
@ Last week, about two dozen (only two dozen!) CatholiCity Citizens emailed us and pleaded something like this: "Don't let CatholiCity shut down. It's helped me with my faith (my marriage, my vocation, my return from being a Protestant–fill in the blank). Let us know what you need."
We're letting you know.
The Mary Foundation is the largest producer of Catholic CDs and audio tapes in America. It sends free audio tapes all over the world. It does no traditional fund-raising. Its materials along with God's grace have transformed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people forever. Its benefactors keep it in the black financially without being directly asked.
Saint Jude Media has distributed over 360,000 novels that also help God change lives. It offers anyone and everyone free books. Its benefactors keep it in the black without being asked.
CatholiCity is unique in that it is the first, safest, and only truly interactive Catholic website with the highest level of professional service in the world. The people reading this CatholiCity Message are its Citizens. You visit enough to fill Yankee Stadium twice a month.
In some ways, CatholiCity might be the largest single monthly prayer gathering in one place of Catholics from around the world.
Will the majority of citizens donate a volunteer tax if you are asked?
Will you help save CatholiCity?
SCENARIO #1. CATHOLICITY LIVES
Response over the next 10 days via online donations and mail-in donations meets or exceeds $42,000. For this to happen, just about every CatholiCity Citizen needs to respond in some way financially. The wealthier among you need to dig deep and send big gifts (You know who you are). The less-than-wealthy among you need to send what you can. Everyone needs to pray, especially the tiny percentage of you who can't afford to send anything. We'll give you an update next week and a final tally the following week.
CatholiCity would survive and we'll commence another Volunteer Tax Drive a year from now. We'll have more Citizens then, and therefore the "tax burden" should decrease.
SCENARIO #2. CATHOLICITY GOES ON LIFE SUPPORT
If the response is less than $42,000, we will extend the deadline for shutting down CatholiCity Interactive Services beyond November 1st according to the amount of donations ($6000 = an extension of one month), but we will encourage our workers to look for new jobs. When they find other jobs, their part of CatholiCity will shut down. We will not have another Tax Drive. The services will be gone forever. It would take a miracle to reverse the terminal illness. Countless people who would have found grace in CatholiCity and therefore would have, of their own free will, chosen heaven, will, also of their own free will, chose hell. This is the high stakes nature of apostolic work.
SCENARIO #3. DEATH COMES TO THE CITY
The response is financially insignificant. We will let you know. The CatholiCity Message will cease. A dead, static, carcass site will replace the dynamic, breathing CatholiCity you know and love. Nothing new. No new links. Unfixed technical glitches and "Error" messages will circle the site like crows.
CatholiCity will become a ghost town.
After the last CatholiCity Message, we will rise from our McIntoshes and Dells, shake hands, congratulate each other for all the long hours and guff we've taken from you guys and each other, and help each other find other jobs. We will go home and give our wives (if we have one) big hugs. Maybe those us from the Old School will throw down a shot of Maker's Mark. Then we will go before the Blessed Sacrament and praise Jesus for all the good CatholiCity did in His service while it lasted. We will ask the Blessed Mother what she wants us to do next and we will do it.
You hold the fate of CatholiCity in your hands.
ONLINE DONATION: https://secure.catholicity.com/donation.html
If the online donations page is swamped, try again every five or ten minutes.
MAIL IN: Please make checks payable to "The Mary Foundation," put "CatholiCity Gift" in the memo field, and send it to:
CatholiCityPO Box 26101
Fairview Park, OH 44126
Yours in Christ,
Your Friends at CatholiCity
