01.06.2005
Cunning plans
Howard Roake reports on the opening days of this year's annual fundraising drive, the Summer Offensive. With £30,000 to get together during June and July, establishing early momentum is vital
A fine donation of £250 helped get the first two days of the Summer Offensive off to a solid start. Comrade JS tells us that he did plan to spend the money on a holiday, but was swayed by Ian Mahoney's article on the Summer Offensive in last week's paper. Also, comrade DS is the first of what will hopefully be a flood of readers using the Pay Pal facility on our website - many thanks for your £20, comrade. Total pledges for this year's Summer Offensive stand at £17,350, as the campaign gets underway. This is a decent start, but we need to push this total up over the next week or so. At the end of the first week of last year's campaign, we had over £22,000 promised and we need to get near or beyond that within a few days. We have a launch meeting on Saturday June 4 that will give it a boost - readers should get donations or details of pledges to us for that date. Comrades around the country are busy concocting cunning plans to raise their personal targets. These include a two-day fast, a number of 'pub quizzes' (not necessarily in pubs, though), busking sessions in a city centre, featuring famous protest songs (as well as "a few originals", we are told) and a benefit gig. We will have a fuller picture of how the start of this year's campaign has gone for next week's column. Use the website or send your donations to BCM Box 928, London WC1N 3SXX - mark the back of cheques and postal orders 'SO'. Robbie Rix writes: My Weekly Worker fighting fund column will be discontinued for the period of the CPGB's Summer Offensive. It has been decided that fundraising will be concentrated on a single appeal for cash - the SO - until the end of July. Cash donated to the Weekly Worker will count towards the overall total, although money intended for the paper will be used exclusively for that purpose - please continue to make cheques and postal orders payable to 'Weekly Worker'. I am pleased to report that the May fighting fund just made our £500 target, with a total of £507, to be exact. Thanks go to comrades GK for his excellent £50, LH, BF and DS (£20 each), and to BC, UL and ST, who each gave a tenner. A minor flurry. I will pass on weekly readership figures from our website to comrade Roake for inclusion in his column from next week. But I can report that last week we had 12,878 readers. See you in August!
Worker