ST GERMAIN WASTE DUMP UPDATE- Town Meeting Time Change + Refunds for Donations on Change.org
Good Morning and Happy Monday Gang! Hope everyone had a great weekend and was able to continue to spread the word about our petition with friends, families, neigbhors. We are now over 900 signatures strong! The outpouring of support has just been incredible. So proud of our St Germain and Vilas County communities... it really goes to show how important our forests and lakes are to all of us. Let's keep fighting and leave no doubt that this sewage waste dump is not wanted at this location!
Just a reminder: Tonight, Monday Dec 11th is the open-to-the-public St Germain Town Board Meeting. The meeting starts at 6:30pm at the Community Center. An announcement regarding the proposed sewage waste dump will be made at the beginning of the meeting. Brief public comments will be allowed. More Information Here on the town Website. If you cannot make the meeting in-person... you can log onto the online Zoom.us meeting by using the following credentials: (Meeting ID: 832 4543 4439) and (Passcode: 734788)
URGENT UPDATE/GREAT NEWS: Donation Refunds from Change.org will now be accepted! As many of you now may know, after signing our petition many folks were prompted by change.org to "chip-in" and donate to our campaign. As a result, change.org collected over $1700 from you generous folks! HOWEVER... those funds did not actually go to our campaign. Those funds were collected by change.org as profit and used to promote our campaign on their website. BUT WE HAVE GOOD NEWS! We contacted change.org and requested #1 to stop prompting folks to "chip-in" and we also requested refunds to those who donated...as we felt they were mislead. Change.org responded right away and not only agreed with us, but they were very complimentary of our campaign and our efforts! After initially being very frustrated with them, we now feel... they are indeed a great organization! Feel free to read the whole email response below!
After requesting your refund, feel free to donate to our actual fundraiser: HERE AT GOFUNDME. And as a reminder, the donations collected here at our official fundraiser may also be refunded if we do not need to use them! We are simply collecting a war-chest in the event of a legal battle or if we need to run advertisements to continue to spread the word about what's happening.
HOW TO CLAIM YOUR REFUND IF YOU DONATED VIA CHANGE.ORG: If you donated or "chipped-in" after signing the petition on change.org, you can email customer service and request a refund. Feel free to copy and paste the message below so they know who you are and what campaign you contributed to.
Email: help@change.org
Message: Hello! I am emailing to request a refund for my "chip-in" donation that I made to the Petition: "Don't Let Saint Germain, WI Go To WASTE". I assumed the donation I made would go to the organizers of the campaign directly and was upset to learn that was not the case. Thankfully we were just told that you have remedied the situation with our campaign organizers and are accepting refund requests! I very much appreciate your understanding in this matter. Below you will find my information and donation amount... as well as a copy of the email correspondence from your staff.
Name: _______
Email: ________
Donation Amount to be refunded: __________
And here is a copy of the Email from change.org in regards to this issue:
"Hi - Thank you for contacting the Change.org Support Team.
I am sorry to hear you would like to disable the promotions in your petition as it helps you to get more views and increase the chances of getting more signatures, however, I do understand that some people donated thinking that they were helping you directly, it will be more than a pleasure to help you with your request.
As requested, I have disabled the option to promote the petition, people who donated to the petition thinking the money was going to the cause directly can contact us to request a refund, and we will be happy to help them, you can post an update with this information, so they can be aware.
I wanted to express my admiration and appreciation for the effort and time you put to create such a great petition "Don't Let Saint Germain, WI Go To Waste", I would like to congratulate you on the argument used in your petition and, I believe your fight will prevail. Remember that every signature counts!
Let me know if you have any further questions, I will be more than happy to help.
Thank you,
Erika
Change.org Support Team."
MOVING FORWARD: We can't thank all of you enough for making your voices heard online and at the town meetings... signing the petition and sharing your thoughts and ideas with friends, family, and neighbors is how we bring about change for the better. Be proud of the work we are all doing to protect St Germain and Vilas County! The fight is not over yet...this battle could take a year or more if it works it way through the courts... but we are off to an incredible start!
Oh yeah... and one more thing... GO PACK GO!!! :)