“This offer is limited to members in the young men’s division, young women’s division, junior high and high school division and the elementary school division. This offer is not retroactive and applies only to new or renewing subscriptions.”
Shirley: “Mommy, mommy, please give me twenty dollars for a World Tribune prescription, please mommy.”
Shirley's mom: “But Shirley, we already have four subscriptions. I have one, daddy has one, your taiten uncle Fester has one, and Ruby has one.”
Shirley: “But mommy, Ruby’s our chihuahua.”
Shirley's mom: “You can have her’s baby.”
Shirley: “But President Ikeda says we should all have our own prescription. We learned that at Elementary School Meeting.”
Shirley's mom: “Ok baby, I’ll get you your very own World Tribune subscription, when you enter the second grade and CAN READ!”
I was told by an SGI-USA member that one of this year's (2014) goals was to increase subscriptions from 35,000 to 50,000. Everybody who's been in SGI knows that active membership very closely tracks with subscriptions. Yet even now, at 35,000 subscriptions, this includes people with more than one subscription! And the push to increase subscriptions to 50,000 actually suggests that people buy multiple subscriptions, according to my contact! They're scrambling, trying to prop up their numbers by any means possible. They already are filling in membership cards for members' family members and roommates, when those other people aren't even SGI members. Back ca. 2006, I was in a leaders meeting with reps from Santa Monica, who explained to us that the new policy was to make out a membership card for every person in a member's household, whether they practiced or not. So as to take better care of the member, don'tcha know. Not to pad and inflate the membership statistics - oh no. I suggested that it would make much more sense to ASK those other people if they were okay with SGI putting their personal information on SGI membership cards, rather than SGI leaders just doing it without asking. But that suggestion was not welcome.
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