Wednesday, April 01, 2020
A Letter to Our Members
I miss all of you. We all do. The whole team has been working very hard to keep you connected with virtual forums on different aspects of the crisis (public health, the impact on the economy, and policy responses). And members of our team have been reaching out on the phone to check in on you. (If you haven’t heard from us yet, you will!) Every day we’ve been thinking about the best ways we can help keep you connected.
We’d love to hear from you, too. This crisis has made us all think about how valuable our City Club is to our communities, and how much our forums have made a difference in people’s lives. We want to hear about your favorite forums, so that we can start featuring them on our website and in our outreach to inspire others to visit our archives to feed their curiosity and nourish their spirit.
Also, we want to hear what you’d like to learn about and who you’d like to hear from. As you can imagine, we are planning virtual forums as we go, so your ideas today can help determine who we might feature next week. We’re in this with you, and we’re in this for you.
As we move through this pandemic and this stay-at-home time, please know that we’re committed to being here every week and to making sure we’ll be ready to welcome you back on the other side.
As you probably realize, presenting free virtual forums means we’re not selling tickets right now, which means tens of thousands in revenue that isn’t coming in to support conversations of consequence. City Club members and partners have stepped up to help fill this revenue gap. Many corporate and foundation partners are supporting our virtual programming, and board members and other members have made additional contributions specifically to support us through the crisis. You can join them. You’ll be getting our spring Annual Fund mailing soon, so keep an eye out for it, and if you can make a contribution, please do.
Your participation means more than ever now. Be a City Club champion simply by sharing. Sharing your ideas for forums. Sharing your favorite forums from our archives. Sharing our virtual forums on social media and with anyone you think might benefit from hearing them.
There’s a word in Italian—forza—Literally, it means force, or power, but people use it to refer to the courage and strength we find to face life’s difficulties. It’s a useful word, and I’ve been signing off on emails with it because I believe that this time will be remembered not for the virus that caused this crisis, but for the ways that we showed up to meet the challenge.
Forza!
--Dan
