Regardless of your political affiliation, it’s important to be able to contact your elected government officials. However, actually doing so can be trying and time-consuming.
That’s where Get Loud Now comes in. The Chicago-based company launched in June aims to increase the effectiveness, and convenience, of contacting local, state and federal representatives.
“We’re focused on making it really easy for citizens to contact their elected reps and donate to issue-related nonprofits using postcards,” said CEO Jeremiah Seraphine.
Here’s how it works: Postcards are designed by local and national artists, themed around specific political issues. The company then uses a series of APIs to gather the contact information of government officials citizens wish to contact based on location, with the ability to reach out to several at one time.
Users are then free to write any message they choose on the postcards.
The thing that’s really important about postcards is the power of design.”
“If you want to send a postcard to every federal representative that you have, you can send that same postcard to all of them,” said Seraphine.
Postcard designs currently cover almost two dozen topics including poverty, LGBTQ issues, community investment, environmental protection, gun violence, net neutrality and immigration.
The idea for the company came about from Seraphine’s discontent with the existing ways people air their political frustrations. He thought Twitter and other social media sites seemed like echo chambers for people to re-enforce their established beliefs. He also noticed many companies were doing issue-based outreach work but thought their methods involved too much solicitation.
Seraphine wanted a way to put power back into the people’s hands and let them create their own messages in a way that didn’t feel superficial. He and co-founder Jude Goergen, who is a graphic artist and the company’s chief creative director, decided to create a platform for postcards because sometimes words just aren’t enough.
“Visual messages have a unique power, something that the written word sometimes can’t capture as quickly and efficiently,” said Seraphine.
Initially, the two co-founders asked friends to create artwork, who then asked their friends create more work. The company is currently working with the National Youth Art Movement Against Gun Violence, who Seraphine ran into at a March for Our Lives event. The Englewood Art Collective started working with Get Loud after Seraphine read an article they were featured in and decided to contact them.
The artists do get paid, but that is not necessarily why they contribute.
“Most of the artists don’t ask about money, but there actually is money in it for them,” said Seraphine. “Most of their contributions are motivated purely by passion, but we think it’s important to give them a revenue share.”
Donations are also a big part of what Get Loud does. The company gives 10 percent of its revenue to nonprofits it supports. It also makes it very easy for users to donate any amount to one of over a dozen organizations by giving them with an option to do so at the time of purchase — a tool Seraphine said is utilized often.
In the future, the company aims to develop official alliances with other organizations.
“What we’re really focused on now is partnerships with issue-related nonprofits, grassroots organizations and progressive public affairs agencies.”
