Communicators' Q&A

Question:

A communicator asked about eliminating the conference's magazine for financial reasons.

If your conference has faced this, what did you do? Have any of you stopped using print materials completely? If so, what has been the reaction? Did it save as much money as they thought it would or did they find themselves spending it in other areas to accomplish communications goals?

Indiana Conference
Dan Gangler - dgangler@inareaumc.org

We had a magazine with a frequency of four times a year and opted out, going back to a 24-page newspaper issued nine times a year at about the same cost. Frequency won out over a magazine appearance. We also post everything we do on the Internet and even more than we print with weekly newsletters and bishop's column plus alerts as they happen. Our print run is 20,500. Unfortunately, our e-mail only has 3,500 addresses, but then again people also log on to find the information they need and do not wish to be part of our mailing list. We print locally and layout our own pages. Our cost is $6,000 per issue including mailing. Our two conferences in Indiana are also receiving similar deficits in giving, but we probably have a larger budget to begin with at $10 million budget in each conference.

Dakotas Conference Communications
Michelle Harvey Erpenbach - erpharv@msn.com

I have, really, only one word for you: DON'T.

Don't cut the number of publications. Maybe look at less costly ways to produce the magazine ...tabloid newspaper, perhaps? I'm also talking to more seminaries about "buying" ads ...we mail non-profit so we're limited, but we can get away with some subsidies to help our costs.

Dakotas Conference cut 2 printings three years ago. I took this job about a year after that and all I've heard since taking the job is "we need better communications" and "I don't think I get that newspaper thing anymore." The powers who decided we should cut print publications assumed everyone would be online in an instant and wouldn't need print materials anymore. Reality is that we continue to be a print society. I know of several church committees who continue to use our print publications as part of their promotional bulletin boards. Because of the lessons we've learned, our 2006 budget request includes an increase to bring back those two publications in our printing schedule.

We're also fiddling with staffing to help with some cost adjustments. Maybe there's a cheaper way to do staffing? I'm fighting the idea of communications as contract workers but this conference has done it semi-successfully for many, many years. I'm also using freelance stringers who are church members and willing to do a little writing for a couple extra bucks. They understand my budget needs and really just want the byline. That way I get remote stories without driving a zillion miles or hiring staff.

Western New York Conference
Marilyn J. Kasperek - mjkasperek@aol.com

Western New York Conference is looking at cutting about $130,000 out of the program spending from 2005 to 2006. Communications is an area they are looking to cut. One of the requests on my desk is to look at changing to a subscription based publication.We currently send a sufficient number to each church to distribute to each worshipping family - and/or electronic only. No decisions have been made, and I am working on proposed budgets and plans for this request.

Yellowstone Conference
Bob Phelps - riprap@digisys.net

Given the small size of the Yellowstone Conference, our experience on this particular subject may not be helpful to a conference the size of Kansas East. On the other hand, it may help to know that the Yellowstone Conference's monthly newsletter is entirely based on the net and entirely done by volunteer editors. In short, we have no budget. My colleague and co-editor, Valerie Lindstrom, and I think we are producing a quality publication that is reaching people in ways which up until now we have been unable to reach. We simply put the 12-14 page issue on our conference web site the first of each month, notifying all conference lay and clergy folk that it has been "published," and let them down-load as they see fit. I share simply by way of saying that trimming the budget, or even going without a budget entirely, is not the end of the world. In point of fact, for us it has meant a new burst of exciting creativity.

New York Conference
Don Collier - dcollier@nyac.com

The New York Conference has faced serious financial shortfalls for several years. When it came time to reduce the budget, we strengthened the newspaper - The Vision. We added pages, we went independent so we could include more conference news, we have now added four-color on at least two pages, we redesigned the front page; we are adding a significant number of subscribers from our various lists.

Additionally, we cut all other print communications: no more program mailings, no more regular mailings. The web site, the newspaper and e-mail (ListServ) have become our only means of communications for the whole conference. Mail is reserved for small groups or committees and those items required by the Discipline.

We have received increasing praise for the paper; most district superintendents have increased their use of e-mail, and forwarding e-mails from the conference to their pastors.

We have had VERY FEW objections to the elimination of snail mail.

North Central New York Conference
Sharon Fulmer - srfulmer@aol.com

At the beginning of the year the Finance Team and Conference Treasurer, using figures from a year ago, set a figure of the percentage they expect to receive. We are told what we can expect to receive, usually in the 80% range of what was budgeted.

Throughout the budget (calendar) year we receive monthly reports from them changing it if needed as monies come in.

We produce a 28-page newspaper each month. If I see we're heading over budget I cut back on the number of pages. This is mailed to approximately 6,000 persons throughout the conference, most of whom are on a church list and receive it at no charge; we do have a few paid subscriptions.

We use no color, and I design it and send it to the printer. I'd like to use four color or even a single additional color on occasion but the cost prohibits it.

We could not stop using print entirely as many of our people are in rural settings and have little ability to connect electronically either because they do not have computers or because they are on dial-up.

We do use our newspaper for presentation of materials. We used it last fall for an adjourned session and will use it this spring for AC registration materials as well as information for pre-conference briefings and annual conference.

Also, I am a part-time employee with no additional staff in the communications area. I am responsible for all printed materials, although we do use a designer for our camping brochure and some other camping materials.

New England Conference
Mike Hickcox

If things happen there as they did in New England, it is easier to cut the budget than to live with the consequences.

Last year at this time, I had a full-time assistant and a budget of about $80,000 for publication. By mid-March, I had no assistant and a publication budget of $0 -- budget cuts.

At Annual Conference in June, $19,000 was thrown back into publication because they couldn't stand having no print piece at all. I was told to just do what I could. We now have an 8-page, magazine sized piece that goes out monthly, with news and event promotion.

The budget was raised to $30,000 for this year, to cover 11 issues.

We now have a new bishop who says this is inadequate. We are changing the focus of the piece to stories of transformation. The concept of news and promotion is gone -- that can be online. In the publication, we want "color", "wow", and "pizzazz."

I still have $30,000 and no assistant or support of any kind.

I will present a proposal to create what is wanted -- which will probably require about $45,000 and some assistance, but there is no current intention of paying for "color", "wow", and "pizzazz." It needs to just happen. I've gotten new quotes from printers and from UMR.

I don't know where the proposal will go, but the lesson is this -- the cuts can easily be made. And it is easy to tell the communication director to just say "no" to what can't be done. But within a year, all that is forgotten and the desire for a full-scale production returns. Then the fight is one the communication director must undertake -- to insist that resources have to be made available to make the miracles happen.

Florida Conference
Michael Wacht

The Florida Conference, about a year ago, went almost entirely away from printed material of any kind. The last step was really our newspaper going to an online news service.

Any promotional material we used to send out is now done in Adobe Acrobat PDF format and posted on our Web site for download. We e-mail clergy and churches about the material and give them a link to the document. This has worked well, because we do most of the work. All the church has to do is print, copy and insert the material into their bulletins. There was some mention of "shifting costs" to the local church, but we reminded them, they paid the costs anyway, through apportionments, and this system reduced waste in printing, postage costs, etc. They saw the logic. This has also been effective for us, and has shown some definite positive results.

This allowed us to close our conference print shop, saving approximately $80,000 in subsidies plus three staff positions.

We do all our clergy and local church charge conference, year-end and clergy consultations online now, so we don't have to print and mail all those forms. This has been a cost and time saver (for the most part). The one cost is staff time teaching clergy how to read simple instructions. :-)

Our news is all online now (http://www.flumc.info). In addition to the postings, we send out a weekly e-mail with teasers and links. We now have nearly as many subscribers to the online news service as we had to the printed paper. The paper subscriptions were mostly freebies to local church leaders. We had very few voluntary paid subscribers. We now have many more voluntary subscribers while still "forcing" clergy and leaders to receive it. Overall, the reaction has been positive. We are shifting our communications to reach entirely new audiences that had never been aware that this kind of information was available. The two negatives were older people (and those who just had to have "a paper in their hands") and isolated rural communities where they pipe in sunshine and just haven't seemed to get the Internet yet. We've tried to market to those negatives by encouraging churches to form small groups or Sunday school classes around the news (they read and discuss one or two articles each week) or to have the office print and offer copies of articles. We've seen some articles picked up and re-printed in newsletters and Web site.

This saved us about $80,000 in printing and mailing costs for the newspaper. It has also opened us up to doing a lot more and better communication. We have the space to do more in-depth reporting, allow more columns and commentaries, even do more stories. We now have color photos with most stories. We are also more accessible to the outside media.

We are also planning later this year to do monthly or quarterly audio streaming programs with conference leaders, inviting them to discuss issues and ideas around the conference, to supplement what we're already doing.

That's a summary of our activities. It won't save $500,000, but we put in our $160,000+ worth.

Oregon-Idaho Annual Conference
Linda Sullivan - umeditor@comcast.net

We faced a similar situation three years ago. We did several things:

1. We went from 12 issues a year to 6 and limited the length of the magazine to 16 pages. Our magazine is printed in 11x17, half-fold format. It was mailed individually with a periodicals permit.
2. We went from in-house printing of 5,000 subscription copies on high-quality white paper to 18,000 copies outsourced to a web-press on newsprint. It is printed in a slightly smaller format, 8.3"x10.75". It is now mailed bulk to churches and handed out, mailed from there, or otherwise distributed. Believe it or not, we saved more than half the cost of printing and mailing, saving somewhere in the neighborhood of $5,000-$6,000 a month.
3. We focused our magazine toward "people in the pew" instead of church leaders. Now we tell only good news and stories that will be of interest to casual and occasional members and outsiders (though church leaders still seem to like it). We use it to encourage our membership and as an evangelism tool for visitors and outsiders. (It was hard for church leaders to get used to not being able to advertise their events, etc. We advertise only Conference-wide events.
4. We established a weekly email newsletter for church leaders that is very popular, but, except for my time, costs nothing. This goes to about 1,100 people. We also do a monthly email newsletter from the Cabinet and one from the bishop to pastors and church leaders. I am about to begin another occasional newsletter called FaithWorks about unusual, very successful or effective programs run by local churches.
5. We also eliminated our in-house print shop (the printer retired a little early), sold all the equipment, and leased high-speed copiers so that staff members now basically do their own printing. We have a key-operator but no one who is a dedicated operator. I had my doubts about whether that would work, but today's copiers are so good that it has worked fine. We are saving about $20,000-$30,000 a year with these changes.
6. We made the decision to rely on a good website to "fill in the gaps." We contracted with a UM web designer who was willing to work with us for a much reduced rate. We have made great strides with this over the last three years--and continually improve it. We have long-range plans to add features for the next two years.
7. One of the difficulties with reliance on the website for communicating with our folks: about one-third of our 218 churches did not have computers or didn't have access to the Web. We really struggled with this because we didn't want to leave people out. So we set about trying to find a way to equip the churches with computers. We started by asking for donations. We received several computers from donors. But how to upgrade them so they would all have the same level of access to the Web. We learned of a local church that had a group of men, mostly retired, who had just formed a "computer ministry." They learned how to build, repair and upgrade computers--and are teaching young people how to do so as well. They offered to check out, repair and upgrade computers for us. We now have just three more computers to distribute to have every church equipped. I consider this nothing short of a miracle. And the whole effort didn't cost the Conference one dime! I made some personal contributions equaling a few hundred dollars for needed software, but otherwise our "miracle men" did everything.
8. By automating several functions through the website, we have been able to eliminate another staff position, our media librarian. Next week the media center will become completely automated allowing people to search the library, read reviews, read user recommendations, make suggestions, and order materials online. We charge a small membership fee for churches that use the library. A volunteer comes in once a week to send out materials and file returns. This saved us about $20,000-$25,000 a year, even with the hiring of a contractor for the website.
9. We are establishing ways for committees and other Conference groups to meet online, have private forums for discussions, keep documents and information through our website. We are making use of an inexpensive teleconferencing service to hold phone meetings. This is saving the Conference travel and meeting expenses resulting in savings of several hundred to thousands per year. This also allows a larger number of people from all parts of the Conference to participate in Conference work.

Our Conference is small in membership, but extensive in geography. We have about 38,000 members spread over two large states. Our Conference staff is down to nine, plus three in Camp and Retreat Ministries, the bishop and his assistant. I am the only person in the Communications department--and the only director without an assistant--and am barely able to keep up, but we have saved a lot of money and, I believe, are just as effective in our communication, better in some ways like the website. The above figures are approximations.

I would be happy to talk with anyone who wants to know more about what we have done, the struggle to make decisions about what direction to go, and how we have done it. The transitions took about three years to accomplish.

Wisconsin
Thomas D'Alessio - dalessio@wisconsinumc.org

In all my experience with the Wisconsin Conference (starting as a probationary member), we never had enough subscriptions to support any newspaper, or any magazine (which is what I came into when I started as communications coordinator). These things were always supported through apportionments; no one valued them enough to want to pay for them. Costs for our magazine kept escalating, and there were mixed reviews (mostly a ghastly silence... though people liked the covers), so I stopped doing it sometime fourth quarter 2003.

By the time I had stopped doing it, we had already built our electronic information service and had all but a few of our 500+ churches on email distribution lists, organized by district, and so information could flow more efficiently to far more people. We rely on WisconsinUMNews emails and our extensive website. Some staffers still send out paper stuff, convinced that "no one reads email from the conference" but one could argue similarly that "no one reads paper from the conference."

There are significant startup costs for equipment (servers, routers) and monthly upstream fees for T1 connections, but the whole thing *could* be done with a couple of servers co-located at a responsible Internet Service Provider. We initially paid for our T1 and equipment back in early 2000 out of a budget line that had previously gone for a monthly VHS video magazine... costly and mostly worthless to people. I have collected a couple dozen reflections (insignificant when measured against 500 churches, but a groundswell when contrasted against the usual and customary deafening silence) that comment something like "the services your office provides are the most visible... maybe the only... evidence of our apportionment dollars; thank you." Of course, we also provide web hosting, email accounts, domain hosting, and a bunch of other information service technologies to all our pastors, churches, and related agencies at no cost (apportionment supported). My annual budget, without the amount designated for database development, is about $200,000.

We put the money that had been designated for print in 2003 into a communications audit, which was completed in early 2004. We took the money designated for print in the 2004 budget and put it into developing a video conference network between our conference center in Sun Prairie and our regional offices in Eau Claire, Appleton and Milwaukee.

There are a few folks on staff who will go to their graves believing that there is something magical or sacred about holding a printed piece of paper in their hands, and arguing with them was probably the beginning of my demise as communications coordinator in Wisconsin, but many of us have seen the future and it is not print except in very specific, "narrowcasted" situations. In my opinion, most of the time the people "out there" are not interested in most of what we think they need to know (so we have been told) and one person's delight is another's disgust. At least with an email it's a simple click to trash and no paper is wasted. If you talk to the "print" people they might tell you I am single-handedly responsible for the demise of Christianity in the Northern Hemisphere because I haven't published a newsletter.

One of the nagging questions I keep asking, whether with printed pieces or with an efficient electronic distribution network, is this: do we have anything to tell that anyone really wants/needs? I am not assuming an answer of "no" because I have received a fair number of thanks for the UMCOR Hotlines I forward on each week, among other things. But when there is a catastrophic explosion of non-support for an organization and its work, what does it mean?

Nebraska Conference
Kathryn Witte - kwitte@umcneb.org

I look at the conference publication as one of the ONLY marketing pieces that goes into the home of our members. It is among THE only visible/tangible pieces that our members receive. Without some tangible evidence of the church in their lives, I would argue that our loyalty and membership would continue to fall in even greater numbers. It is classic the secular world that when budgets are cut, the first to go is the marketing budget, when in fact, it's the time that organizations should be marketing even more.

If the publication is not the vehicle then a conference needs to figure out how the same information is delivered. In Nebraska we do an email that has gone primarily to clergy and lay leaders. It is a list of over 1000. Our hope it to grow it to the close to 50,000 that receive our publication. It is our hope that when we reach those kinds of numbers WE COULD become less reliant on print. However, until there is a good communication conduit to the membership at large, I would hesitate cutting the publication entirely. A stop-gap measure might be to go to a quarterly publication or some lesser type of frequency. Even an annual report type of approach would be better than nothing at all.

I am also in the middle of evaluating a subscription option. Many conferences have subscriptions, we don't. I think it's something we need to explore. When I did a survey a little over a year ago, however, people didn't seem willing to pay more than $10-15 for a subscription. If one adopts a subscriptions approach, I think it has to at least break even to make it worthwhile. I'm guess there will be other communicators who can talk at length about subscriptions and the management and costs of those...I'm just not there yet to say how it compares, I'm still gathering my facts on overhead, list management, other costs and how it impacts staff overall.

There is nothing tangible in my musings above other than it's a direction I'm trying to go. When I came to Nebraska we went from 10 issues to 7 issues with various page lengths. Now I continue to have 7 editions, however, I'm limited to 8 pages because of a tight budget. As I mentioned above, it is my hope that over time we can reduce it further. I think until we/you have good vehicles of communication to replace it, I think cutting your paper entirely will only spiral, in an even more severe fashion, the down money situation you already find yourselves.

Rocky Mountain Conference
Ron Hodges - ron@rmcumc.com

Here is where we are. Our motivation was not financial but efficiency.

In 2002 we went to "all-electronic" communications. To assist that in happening we spent a rather large amount of money, (I wasn't in this position at that time so I don't have an exact dollar amount) to help each church purchase a dell computer if they did not already have a pc. (Dell gave us bulk-purchasing discounts). The Conference insisted that each church secure a server and we were off and running.

Currently, we still have around 300 "folks" who do not receive our "Table Talk" via e-mail. This is the "newsy" stuff and we send them a multi-page, 8.5x11 paper about once every 6 weeks. But these folks are almost all either surviving spouses of clergy, retired clergy, or laity who live in isolated areas where phone lines are a bit "iffy."

Our e-mail list then includes all clergy and every church. We have several types of e-mails we put out: "ALERT" - these are emergency notices [When the Hayman fire threatened one of our camps and notices needed to go out]. "NEWS" - important items but not emergencies. 'BULLETIN BOARD" - items that come to us from others and we "post" them with their web pages so people can check them out if interested. [Asbury Seminary looking for a new president, etc.] 'TABLE TALK - lots of information about things that are going on, people and places, etc. [This is the old Church paper kind-of-thing]. "DIALOGUE" - this is a place where anyone can write anything and others can respond to them about issues. ["Why the guaranteed appointment system must be changed," etc.]

We have one person maintaining our data base - but that is necessary anyway for appointments, etc. We have one person overseeing all of the electronic communications. We also have a Web Page and the second person shares a lot of that task with a third person.

We have cut our paper consumption unbelievably. We can respond to issues or needs almost immediately (one of our D.S.s took very ill - prayers were requested and he started receiving e-mails of concern within 5 minutes). I can go on and on about the value of this program. And I am a slow-adapter and wasn't sure I wanted to get rid of a perfectly good typewriter.

For additional information contact our Information Administrator, Ben Roe at Ben@rmcumc.com.

California-Pacific Conference
Gary Keene - gkeene@cal-pac.org

I'm not sure what might still be in the files in Rocky Mtn, but we went thru cutting the print publication of the conference back in 1998-1999. (I think you might recall some of our story, since I did a presentation on this at UMAC, back when...)

It sounds like (for Kansas East) the dollars are forcing questions that could've/should've been addressed sooner: if people are not subscribing directly to the magazine, then the conference has no verifiable way to assess its effectiveness-- it is assuming the good will of its readers (that they read this free magazine,) when in fact, if that goodwill is put to the test (subscribe or you don't get it) they would probably find only nominal support. Admittedly, the "nominal support" can be disproportionately vocal!

So the question is-- and frankly, this always sounds SO obvious, but communications is so intangible that people get a lot of their assumptions and values wrapped up in it in a way that is very difficult to untangle-- anyway, the real harsh question is, "What does the Conference need to communicate, and what dollars are we going to spend to do that communication? What are the most effective media per dollar?" That means all the standard questions like:

Who is the target audience, is it internal or external? (If it's within the church, then do we mean, within the conference leadership, or are we trying to hit the pew? If the latter, why, and what is the best way to do that? Hint: leadership is the doorway, the threshold-- that's the real target.)

More importantly, how can connectional funding (apportionment dollars) best support the mission of the conference? (Which is different than the mission of the local congregation: IF the funds need to be justified in terms of the local church, that assumption should be honestly tested, and THEN a decision made that is honest about whose interests are being served.) In the same vein, what could connectional communications funds be spent on that would benefit local church, that they cannot afford or know how to spend more directly themselves?

Well, I've got plenty to say on the subject, mostly because it was both a painful and productive experience: I'd be glad to chat by phone.