In Part 2 of the PeopleCount story, I told how we made a business plan, formed a partnership, built a first product, and prototyped the website. Next, we incorporated, polished it and got ready for a launch.
The first website was simple text and somewhat long-winded. Although the ideas were sound, the delivery lacked punch and aesthetics. Graphics and brevity are not my strong suits, but one of my board members, Ed, an expert in branding, and my friend Jackie, a graphic designer who designed my business cards, had impressed on me how important these are.
Toward the end of September, I read about a marketing team that could help, and was excited to see they had inexpensive packages for startups, starting with tailoring the messages and website. We began working together at the beginning of October.
Ed, brainstormed some possible main messages. The marketing team and I chose a tagline that spoke not only of PeopleCount’s mission, but also one that would empower our users to create a difference: Make your Political Opinion Count!
Then we worked with a web designer to design the three types of pages and a coder built the templates for the web pages. Finally, I wrote some scripts to build the pages and hooked up the political profiles.
During this time I also began incorporating PeopleCount, Inc as a California benefit corporation. This gives us the flexibility of a corporation with the public-benefit purpose of a non-profit.
After finishing the website and fine-tuning our messages, our marketing team began the push for content that would help legitimize PeopleCount.org, as well as spread the news of our overall mission and values. This came in the form of blogging, writing articles, and creating communities on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and LinkedIn.
Finally, PeopleCount.org had a face to go with our message: Make a difference in creating a government that works.
Why PeopleCount.org?
Do you remember the phrase: Democracy of, by, and for the people?
The story is much different today. What we have now is Democracy of, by, and for politicians, parties, lobbyists, and special interest groups. And then the people.
In our political system, “we the people” are separated from our representatives. When they hear from a few of us, they have no way of knowing what the rest think. If they would hear from all of us, the letters, emails and calls would be too numerous to read and difficult to interpret.
Due to this separation, our politicians cannot know what we want, so they listen to the people around them: lobbyists, special interest groups, and big donors. In addition, they listen to their parties, but the parties are too often entrenched in posturing and fighting for power rather than resolving the problems facing our country and upholding our rights and the constitution.
PeopleCount.org seeks to bridge this divide, to make the voices of the people count the most, to deliver a democracy truly of, by, and for the people. PeopleCount.org is a portal to communicate our views so our wants and needs will be obvious to ourselves and our representatives.
The structure of our current system supports the results we have — divisive political discourse and a country beset with long wars, costly energy, deficit and debt, and crises of mismanagement. It gives us a government in gridlock, stuck in an ideological struggle for power instead of carrying out the will of the people. How could it be otherwise when the will of the people isn’t known? We keep hoping for better outcomes without changing the system.
Using PeopleCount.org, our wishes will be clear to both our politicians and ourselves, creating an environment in which our politicians needn’t argue. Knowing what we want, they can work together to deliver it.
What do you think of the PeopleCount.org story? Can you see the platform bridging the gap between politicians and the people?