George,

Well, the timing of my column in The Observer this week couldn't have been better ("Pat and Jerry don't speak for all of us").

As you know, I used to work for Christian Coalition. What you may not know is that I created, launched and managed the organization's internet activities from 94-99 (and actually won a few national awards in the early years).

I also was on the ground floor developing (industry wide, not just the CC) what we used to call "affinity ISPs" -- which were marginally successful fund-raising devices. In a nutshell, a large ISP would bundle its dial-up onto a CD, change the packaging to reflect the organizational "colors" and build a "members only" portal-style home page. They were only marginally successful because the price was the same as -- or higher -- than AOL or NTelos or Adelphia, the service was usually far less, and a very, very small percentage of the proceeds ever made it back to the affinity organization. I argued to the Coalition powers-that-be back in the day that such a program would be fine as a membership benefit, but that spending money to develop it as a "recruit and retain" device was a waste. (Guess the new crop of leaders didn't get the memo.)

I have no problem with affinity-marketing. I mean, everything from lunch boxes to credit cards to magazines carry special messages from AARP, GMC and United Airlines.

However, it doesn't take a Madison Avenue marketing genius to figure out that the kind of promotion the Coalition is using causes more harm than good. It leaves a sour aftertaste with your organizational friends, dispels your organizational "prospects" and utterly galvanizes your organizational, um, opposition.

Jeff Peyton (Electronic Mail, October 5, 2001).