Listservs are vital to our communities
Vital Communities is planning on sunsetting all of its town-based community listservs in the near future pointing subscribers to Front Porch Forum as a replacement. As a volunteer on several town committees in Sharon, I want to flag why that swap doesn’t work for groups like ours. I am sure anyone who volunteers on a town committee has the same story to tell.
The Sharon Parent Teacher Organization has a marketing budget of about $10, which barely covers the cost of paper. The community calendar I run and Sharon Connects both operate on a marketing budget of $0. None of us can pay to reach our neighbors, and the listserv let us do that for free, with every post on equal footing. Front Porch Forum is free for individuals, but organizations need a business or nonprofit profile to post, and full access sits behind paid plans. I’ve already had posts denied there for conflicting with their own paid calendar product. That’s a real cost for volunteer-run groups, not a hypothetical one.
We know Vital Communities is under financial strain according to their latest financial filings, and this may be more about staff capacity than money; the listserv itself seems from their filings cheap to run, using open-source software and volunteer moderators. That’s exactly why the right move is a handoff, not a shutdown. If Vital Communities can no longer run this vital community tool, another local organization should be given the chance to keep it free and open, rather than letting decades of grassroots, Yankee-frugal community connection quietly disappear.