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Surplus
Opens Doors of Opportunity
An Important Message to all of our Supporters
Reflecting back on the many blessings our project has received, most
notably has been the incredible generosity of Sony
Disc Manufacturing and USA Video
Interactive. We continue to be thankful for their support in going
beyond the call of giving toward helping us fulfill our mission.
Sony, which joined us early in our cause, manufactured discs for our
statewide release in November of 1999 with all costs donated in-kind
and then again stepped up to the plate to manufacture another 32,000
units at cost to accommodate our national release in April of 2000.
The national release, in which 30,000 units went toward fulfilling the
Musicland Corporation’s order
for nearly a thousand stores across the country was made possible by
a generous donation of $25,000 by USA Video Interactive.
Everyone’s vision was to raise as much money as possible through the
national release, which LFC anticipated would raise about $300,000.
On a humble budget of less than $10,000, LFC made a prudent attempt
to promote the CD through it’s point-of-purchase advertising distributed
with the CDs and through television promotion donated by over a dozen
PAX affiliates to raise public awareness of our CD. In spite of our
promotional efforts, we did not reach our goal.
To date, the Musicland Group, which kindly extended its initial window
to sell the CD from three months to nearly nine months, recently informed
us that less than two-thousand units were sold in all of it’s Sam Goody,
Mediaplay, and On Cue outlets across the country.
In addition to the CDs, we have over a thousand of the beautifully designed
posters by Star Wars illustrator Drew Struzan still remaining.
There are any number of variables which could have contributed to this
and our questions have ranged from “Did we do enough to promote our
CD?” to “Have people lost interest in helping out the Columbine families?”
Although we worked very hard to get the word out, we believe that the
answer is probably somewhere in the middle, and at a time when we were
looking toward soon retiring our fundraising effort, we now find ourselves
at the threshold of a new challenge, and new opportunity.
Among several viable options, the one we believe is most productive
toward reaching our target beneficiaries is providing our products to
other nonprofit organizations at little or no cost whose goals are aligned
with one or more elements of our mission statement and who have an existing
structure in place that could effectively sell them.
Over the last several months, I have met with several Columbine families
who are in the process of putting their own nonprofit organizations
together that could benefit greatly from such an arrangement. In fact,
this approach would be ideal as it would help the Columbine survivors
“help themselves”. In the months to come, this kind of partnership will
be our primary focus before we look to other organizations outside of
the Columbine community.
Whatever direction we end up pursuing, the important thing to recognize
is that our surplus is an asset. LFC owns the CDs outright and
there is nothing owed on them as they have already been paid for. As
I believe it was Divine Providence that made it possible for us to have
them in the first place, we believe there is more to this blessing than
we originally perceived when we first launched our national campaign.
On behalf of all of us at LFC, we are committed to rising to the challenge
to meet our objectives and help make the world a better place for those
who have endured such an incredible loss and to support causes involved
with healing and violence prevention.
We thank everyone for their undying support throughout the many months
we have worked together and look forward to a productive resolve at
this important phase in our mission. In light of the shootings that
continue to plague our nation’s schools, the importance of efforts such
as ours is painfully obvious as there is so much left that all of us
can to do. If you have a need that meets our criteria which we
could partnership, feel free to contact me personally through any one
of several means provided on our "Write to Us” page.
To those who are graduating this spring at Columbine and high schools
throughout the country, all of us at LFC congratulate you in this important
milestone in your life and encourage you to go into the world with hope
and heartfelt commitment to make the world a better place.
God bless,
Michael Tamburello
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