About Pushcards

Why Pushcards?

Pushcards combines visual expression, the ease of online campaigning, and reach of social media, with the impact of old-fashioned, offline advocacy. Our primary goal is to generate political power: to mobilize communities and move decision-makers to change policies.

Conventional online petitions have become ubiquitous, and while these have had notable success, decision makers are increasingly saturated with cheap, easy electronic communication. “The Advocacy Gap,” a 2012 survey of 4,000 activists and Congressional staff by Fission Strategy shows that electronic communication is increasingly ignored, and that the quality of a communication often trumps the quantity of signatures obtained. Personal communication from constituents carries more weight with decision makers than petitions and other mass electronic communications.

Pushcards is not intended to replace other advocacy tactics — it is a force multiplier to complement other advocacy strategies to give them that extra punch. When used in conjunction with other tactics Pushcards can amplify their impact.

Images create emotional response and there is already huge traffic in curating and sharing images through social media. People love sharing images online — and want to make a difference for causes they care about. Personalized, physical postcards backed by electronic mobilization is an untapped and potentially powerful advocacy tactic that groups can use to make a difference in their campaigns. Over time the site will become a hub for activists on a range of progressive issues, a means for users to discover related campaigns on issues they care about.


Who can use Pushcards?

Anyone with a grievance and an Internet connection can use Pushcards to make themselves heard: activists, organizers, parents, students, workers, consumers, pedestrians — even graphic designers.


How much does it cost?

Anyone can start a campaign page for free by entering an issue brief and uploading a postcard image or design.

Each postcard costs the sender $1.49 for professional printing and first-class postage within the U.S., or $2.29 for international mail.


How long does it take for cards to arrive?

Orders placed before 7pm Eastern Time (00:00 GMT) will be printed and mailed the next business day.

For postcards addressed within the United States should arrive within 3-5 business days. International deliveries, depend on the recipient’s country, but the average delivery time is approximately 10 to 15 business days.


What else can you do with Pushcards?

In addition to advocacy campaigns, you can use Pushcards any time you want a group of people to send postcards to an individual. Use Pushcards to send correspondence to a loved one, a teacher, a prisoner, for a wedding or birthday, for any occasion!


But the trees? Who will speak for the trees?

A percentage of the profits will be donated to the Green Belt Movement to offset the environmental impact of paper, printing, and mailing.


Who did this?

Pushcards was designed, and developed by John Emerson with coding and Node.js mentoring from Alexandru Vladutu.

John is an activist, graphic designer, writer, and programmer based in New York City. He has designed web sites, printed materials and motion graphics for leading media companies as well as local and international non-profit organizations including Amnesty International USA, Human Rights Watch, the Committee to Protect Journalists, and the United Nations. His writing about graphic design and activism has been published in Communication Arts and Print, featured in Metropolis, HOW, and The Wall Street Journal. He co-founded the social media consultancy Apperceptive in 2006 and sold it to Six Apart Ltd in 2008. Since 2002, he has published Social Design Notes, a weblog of writings and clippings on design and activism at http://backspace.com/notes

Alex is a programmer in Pitesti, Romania. He is a top 10% respondent on Node.js at Stack Overflow and also a really nice guy.

Kyle Dawkins also helped with systems advice and some initial code.