Identity & Communication Event held on 3-20-2004 "Tell 'em Who You Are!" | |
Brochures
Glen
Ridge Mails Brochure to Every Residence in Town
We mail our brochure [to be posted here] in late August to arrive prior to
or just after Labor Day. We mail a second version to arrive on or about Ash
Wednesday. The first one contains fall program info and invitation to church
school and some Advent/Christmas announcements. The spring version contains Lent/Easter materials. We mail this to each house in Glen Ridge,
about 2500 homes, plus everyone on our mailing list not living in GR. We get mailing labels from our town. It is
the ‘Water List,’ that is, those who receive a water bill. We pay $35 for the labels. The Post Office
will not let us mail to ‘Occupant…GR, NJ’.
All have to have a name and a street address.
A
member of the church lays the brochure out and produces a disk for the printer.
This is very time consuming. We couldn’t do it without his work. As you can tell, he’s a professional. Our ministers work up the ideas, dates and
such for each version. He lays it out and we go over the draft with him prior
to taking it to the printer. The
printer gets it and prints a proof. We must approve. Ink color and paper stock
are determined. We paid printer $535
for printing and folding the brochure you have in your hand.
The
brochure comes back to church. Each is labeled and sorted according to postal
routes in town. (The labels don’t get
sorted this way; so it’s very time consuming.) A group of volunteers do this
under the Administrative Assistant’s supervision. It takes about a day for 5 to
8 people. Then it’s put in the mail at
a cost of just shy of $400 for 2500 items.
This
brochure that you are looking at today went out this spring. The following two
Sundays we had 6 new families visit the church. These were all people new in
town. Most have come back and we’ve
contacted them with follow up letters/calls.
I think this is a result of the brochures, based on what the visitors
tell me. GR folks who are members of other
churches will sometimes comment on our outreach projects or our music programs.
This indicates to me that neighbors read the brochures even if they aren’t
looking for a church.
From
time to time groups in the town involved in welcoming newcomers ask for copies.
We give them several hundred and these are further handed out. I once had a new
couple tell me that when they bought their house the realtor gave them one of
our brochures. So the brochures have a
life of their own.
Don’t
expect this to be easy. It requires full support and work by the minister. The church has to be well organized enough
to know what is planned months in advance. And we try to vary the materials
slightly each edition. This maintains
interest, we believe. This spring we also produced a secondary brochure about
our Academy of Religious Studies, Lenten Term. Previously we had only sent this
to church members. This year we inserted it into the town brochure. The
brochure has to be stuck in with tape before the Post Office will accept. That
adds time for the volunteers.
—The Rev.
Joseph David Stinson