OPN New Equipment Fund Drive     ______20000
                                  | |           
                 Pledges          | |   OPN       
                 From Local       | |   MEMBERS 
                 Businesses       | |   
                 ______15000     _| |__15000
                 _|$|__14000      | |
                 _|$|__13000      | |
                 _|$|__12000      | |              We're trying to raise
                 _|$|__11000      | |              $40,000 so we can grow
                 _|$|__10000     _| |__10000       to over 100 phone lines
                 _|$|__9000       | |              and serve 5000+ members.
  OPN BOARD      _|$|__8000       | |
  & VOLUNTRS     _|$|__7000       | |              Our plan is to raise
                 _|$|__6000       | |              half from OPN members 
  ______5000     _|$|__5000      _| |__5000        like yourself and then
  _| |__4000     _|$|__4000       | |              match your contributions
  _| |__3000     _|$|__3000       |$|              with funds from business
  _|$|__2000     _|$|__2000       |$|              sponsors and volunteers.
  _|$|__1000     _|$|__1000       |$|              
  _|$|__0        _|$|__0         _|$|__0           Please Pitch In!
  /$$$\          /$$$\           /$$$\
  \OPN/          \OPN/           \OPN/


NEW EQUIPMENT FUND STILL SHY OF GOAL

When I first started bending people's ears about raising $40K for new
equipment in December, many of you probably wondered what the fuss was
about-- it seemed like we were doing fine with the forty phone lines at
the new LCC site.  At the end of November, there were a little over
1,800 members.  Now, we number almost 2,400.  From past experience, we
know that the system seems most useful if we keep the ratio of members
to phone lines at forty or below.  Our ratio now is over 50 and we
continue to add 250-300 members a month.  That's why you're probably
starting to hear busy signals more frequently when you try to log in.

So why don't we add more phone lines?  We have easy access to over 100
pairs of copper wire from the phone company.  The answer is that our
current computer is maxed out and can't handle any more users at one
time than it is now.  To add more phone lines without adding more
computing power would be like hitching a triple bottom trailer up to
family car-- things would slow way down in short order.

Our plan is to try to grow the system fast enough so that we don't have
to turn away new members (our commitment to making sure there are no
information have-nots extends to accepting all newcomers).  We haven't
advertised OPN because word-of-mouth and an occasional news article
have brought us enough growth to keep us scrambling.

We project that by the end of July, membership will have grown to four
or five thousand, requiring 100-125 phone lines of capacity.  So, by
then we should add 80 phone lines.  The modems and terminal servers
alone will cost $21,720.  The additional CPUs would cost about $50,000
or more if we bought them new (Sun workstations aren't cheap), but we
think we can buy used and refurbished equipment to meet our needs for
about $20,000.  We also need to add about $5K of disk space (about 15
Gigabytes).

OPN's board members, volunteers and business sponsors have come up with
only about half of our goal.  It's up to members like you to help us
get the rest of the way there.  A number of you have already
contributed generously, but many more haven't yet.  Maybe you didn't
think it was really necessary before.  As membership climbs, it will
become more and more painfully obvious that the current computer system
isn't enough to serve our virtual community.  We hope that we can
complete the upgrade *before* access gets really bad.

Many of OPN's volunteers are spending twenty or more hours a week and
two percent or more of their annual income to make this project work.
We believe that widespread access to all kinds of information is the
foundation of an effective democracy as well as the best guiding
principle of a free market.  We hope our efforts will lead to greater
citizen participation in government and higher levels of quality in
both public and private sectors.  We also hope that our efforts will
help Eugene keep ahead with a globally-competitive workforce and
economy.

We've already heard about people finding jobs through postings on EFN
and about relatives being able to afford to communicate between Eugene
and and the Middle East.  Some, like myself, are able to telecommute to
distant jobs and still enjoy living in Eugene.  This is only the
beginning.  Who knows what the limits to improving people's lives with
internet technology might be?  We hope you'll join with us to help OPN
grow and realize the answer to that question.

Please take a moment and mail a check today (payable to "Oregon Public
Networking" or "OPN") to:

            OPN, Attn: New Equipment Fund
            PO Box 1914
            Eugene OR 97440-1914

Remember to write your user-id (login name) and "New Equipment Fund" on
the check in the "memo" or "for" space in the lower left.  Thanks for
your support.

+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
   Oregon Public Networking  -- Your Gateway to The Electronic Frontier
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+