I talked to Mr. Forrest Stone at Lifetime Learning this afternoon. I asked him about the delay in sending out the packages from April to May. He said they went awhile and didn't hear from TSIG, there had been a delay, and they had been in a rush to get the packages out. He believes that the distribution should be fine given that the effectiveness of such a campaign depends on PTA/PTO leaders and school principals. School principals work a 12-month year and have the summer to make fund-raising plans. Classroom teachers are finishing up about now and are probably not doing a great deal of fund-raising planning for next year.
Mr. Stone said that the timing of sending materials to schools is very tricky. There are pro's and con's to almost every date on the school year. So he asked the rhetorical question, "Was the delay a misfortune or a happy circumstance?"
BTW, in a previous conversation with Paul Henry, he mentioned a funding need that was connected to the Lifetime Learning package distribution. I conclude that the delay may have been related to lack of funds. Anyone wanting to step up and loan TSIG some money at 8%? We could avoid these pesky delays.
According to Mr. Stone, TSIG is using Lifetime Learning for their educational expertise. They have an "agile and malleable" database that allows them to mail by institutional name to schools all over the U.S. Their core business is developing educational material for sponsors who want a product in the schools with the sponsor's name on it.
I asked Mr. Stone about whether he was involved with the projection of sales, etc. No, he was not. He did say, however, that they had mailed a "darn nice package," readable, clear, which develops a compelling case for schools to adopt the Music Card as their fundraiser. He said that considering the substantial volume of material that was mailed out, there was reason to be "very, very optimistic" about the results. He said that he had been to the Music Card web site and had been favorably impressed with it.
He commented on the tendency of school people to be rather slow to get moving. He added that just like Newton's laws of inertia, once the school people get moving, they tend to keep on going. He said, "Once you have them, they are extremely loyal." He pointed out that whatever success level is achieved the first year, he would expect it to increase the second year and succeeding years.
Mr. Stone was extremely pleasant. From the above report, it is obvious that it is not his job to babysit TSIG shareholders. He asked that this information be shared with anybody who is interested so he wouldn't receive 30 phone calls about it.
Regards, Suzanne
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