Donations
Thomas A. Droleskey
Post Office Box 199
Monroe, Connecticut 06468
May 2, 2008, Fund-Raising Appeal Letter
Thomas A. Droleskey
Post Office Box 199• Monroe, Connecticut 06468
May 2, 2008
Dear Friends:
It has been three months since this fund-raising appeal letter has been updated, although there were some emergency requests made on the home page of this site nearly two months ago when the motor home's transmission died on Interstate 80 in Pennsylvania.
Although I am absolutely a disaster when it comes to fund-raising, I do have enough sense not to attempt to "go to the well," so to speak, too frequently. There are some Catholic apostolates that hire professional fund-raising firms to compose and to then distribute direct mail fund-raising letters, each of which is meant to carry some of kind of urgent and usually emotionally-laded appeal within its paragraphs. Some of the more manipulative of these fund-raising appeals even claim that one's very salvation is at stake if he does not make a donation to a particular apostolate. Other fund-raising efforts involve the hiring of firms that will telephone people whose names are on a donor list, doing so every few weeks, another form of emotional manipulation.
Believe it or not, however, it is these "squeaky wheels," if you will, that convince Catholics to be make donations to this or that apostolate. The same sort of efforts are made by the naturalists who raise funds for whichever candidate du jour for whom they happen to be shilling. Millions upon millions of dollars are raised in a matter of hours on some occasions for various candidates.
We cannot afford a direct-mail appeal. I only take to telephoning individuals in the cases of major emergencies, and I despise having to do so. Thus it is that we rely upon the letter on this page that gets updated periodically as well as whatever appeals I make on the home page of this site.
As is well known, only about 2.5 percent of the 4,493 discrete human beings who access this site each month have ever made a non tax-deductible donation to us. Nothing seems to be able to move the other 97.5 percent of the site's readers to even consider donating as little as two to five dollars each month to sustain its work. While I full well realize that not everyone who accesses this site may have the means to be of assistance financially and that there are others who do not support the articles that appear hereon at all, there must be at least twenty to thirty percent of those who view this site regularly who do have the means to make a modest gift each month and who do support its work.
The work offered on this site is done first and foremost for the honor and glory of the Most Blessed Trinity, offered to the good God through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary. As I am, despite excellent professional references, unemployable in my own field of the college teaching of political science, I must rely upon the work offered on this site to generate the financial means to support my family and to pay our monthly bills. Nearly seventy original articles have been written thus far in calendar year 2008, many others revised quite substantially for purposes of republication. It is a never-ending source of wonder to consider the fact that so few people who access this site and who support its contents (no one, of course, who is opposed to my writing is at all expected to support us!)believe that it is at all necessary to take the time to make a small donation to relieve the human stress associated with not knowing what our income will be from month to month.
Indeed, some readers get righteous when these fund-raising appeal letters are updated, expressing their anger that I should even ask anyone to make a non-tax-deductible gift to us. I get all manner of angry notes from people telling me to quit asking for money. Others have said that I should not request readers to make financial gifts if I am going to continue offering my writing for free without charging a subscription. Obviously, some of these people would be among the first to accuse me of being unjust if I made it necessary to have a paid subscription so as to access the site. The failure of the new video lecture website to generate any great interest among the readers of this particular site goes to prove that there is a firewall of resistance to paying anything, no matter how nominal, for my work.
The only guaranteed income I receive each year is from a pension fund from which I have been withdrawing funds since 2004 and will be paid out in its entirety by the year 2012. The 2008 payout, which is around $1700, will make its way to us today. The entire sum will be spent to pay for but a part of the substantial front end repairs that our Trail Blazer is yet undergoing. We simply need the readers of this site who support its work and who have the financial wherewithal to be of assistance to decide once and for all if its work is worth sustaining. As I have noted on so many other occasions, please do not think that the "other reader" will send in his donation. The "other reader" isn't doing so. It's up to you to do so. Now, not later. Now.
What more can I do or say to convince those who support the work of this site and who have the means to be of assistance to us to make non-tax-deductible gifts in the amount of as little as between two to five dollars a month?
We leave this all in the hands of Our Lady and her Most Chaste Spouse, Saint Joseph. We accept the crosses of sustaining ourselves as but a small part of the price that we must pay to do penance for our sins as the consecrated slaves of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of His Most Blessed Mother. Our prayer is that more and more people who access this site and support its work, now in its fifth year on the internet after seven years as a printed journal, will be generous enough to assist us on a regular basis with small gifts.
As always, we remain grateful to those good and generous souls who have been so kind to us, without whose assistance we would not have been able to pay bills in major emergencies or to even meet our daily expenses. We simply need more of this site's readership (those, once again, who have the means to make gifts and who support the work of the site) to join their ranks on a regular basis. I do not believe that this is asking too much.
Those who do support the work of this site but who cannot make a donation should have no compunction whatsoever about reading my articles. Just as it is the case that each of us is supported by the prayers of many people whom we will only meet personally in eternity, please God and by His Most Blessed Mother's maternal intercession we die in states of Sanctifying Grace, so is it the case that financial gifts offered by those able to offer them make it possible for those without the means to donate to have access to this site. Those who cannot support the work of this site financially but who do profit from its contents should simply pray for the site's benefactors in thanksgiving for making it possible for the work to continue.
Once again, as should be obvious, we are not asking those who do not support and/or are adamantly opposed to the work of site to be at all sympathetic to this request. We are simply asking those who do support the work of this site--and who have the financial means to make a donation--to make a gift, either by PayPal (click on the icon above or below) or via the "snail mail" to our post office box in Connecticut, as soon as possible. As noted above, if only a fraction of those gave us between $2 and $5 right now we would be able to meet our monthly expenses. Please consider helping us today.
As I have noted frequently in the past two years now, donations to us personally are not tax-deductible. "All" you will get for supporting the work of this site is the eternal merit for your generosity--and a remembrance of your intentions in our daily prayers. Remember, any one individual can make a gift of up to $12,000.00 in any calendar year without any tax liability to them or to us.
We are always in need of your generosity to meet our daily and monthly expenses.
Will you help us out?
Please know of our prayers every day.
Our Lady of Good Success, pray for us!
Saint Joseph, pray for us!
Saint Gertrude, pray for us.
Saint John Eudes, pray for us
Saint Hyacinth, for us.
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux,pray for us.
Sincerely yours in Christ the King and Mary our Immaculate Queen,
Thomas A. Droleskey
Personal gifts that do not qualify for a tax deduction may be sent to:
Thomas A. Droleskey
Post Office Box 199
Monroe, Connecticut 06468
