Could you Help Us with this?
Hello NDCAG members
We can now announce that we have topped the 50 membership mark – primarily Debenture Creditors (DCs) but also some brokers
Not a huge achievement you might say given the time since NDCAG started (Nov 2017)
Not a huge achievement as concerns mobilisation of the DCs over the nearly 10 years since the Sharemax “collapse”
Simply put, we at NDCAG have just not been able to reach all DCs and as you may be aware, Nova has declined to recognise us or give us the necessary contact details
So the purpose of this mail is to put a proposal to you by way of requesting a “contribution” to the cause from you
The opportunity exists to initiate a recruitment drive using SMSs
Would you be willing to “donate” say, 10 of the SMS‘s that you have under your cell phone contract (we appreciate that this will only apply to some members and that differing cellphone contract/prepaid features will apply) to use to message a list of 10 DC numbers that we will supply and with a message from us? The numbers will be those on a list of supposed DCs that was given to us way back and which contains only telephone #s
(We mention that we have looked at using a bulk SMS service but have found two inhibitors: 1) cost: cheapest per message price seen is 20¢ and to reach all on our list would cost 7000 +/-, 2) integrity of the contact list: not good. It does not have a cell # for all persons in same and rejection rate may be high – the list is old)
Here’s the objective: if our current 52 members could reach 520 supposed DC’s via the numbers that we provide, this might result in up to 520 new registrations
If we repeat the exercise after say a successful pilot effort, we’d have 572 members potentially reaching 5720 supposed DCs which might take our membership up to 6292 (ignoring ‘rejections’)
Another two rounds of this exercise could take us to a “critical mass” membership level where we could knock on Nova’s door and demand recognition and representation. We could become “the voice of the Debenture Creditors”
Of course, the above outcomes imply a 100% response by the SMS recipients but it is not necessarily “pie in the sky” stuff. If we can initiate and then broaden this, to recruit a significant number of DCs, perhaps NDCAG, representing the member DCs (but also working for non-members) will have acquired a level of “clout” that the Nova board will be unable to ignore and thus get a foot (and more) in the door and start addressing the ongoing issues effectively on the inside rather than ineffectively from the outside as has been the case for almost ten years now
So, will you assist with your participation?
To implement, we will have to:
– prepare a sufficiently short yet compelling SMS text for transmission
– prepare the “rules of engagement” for participant members (which will include a specific request that SMS message recipients are not to respond to the sender)
– track who has been addressed and who not
– prepare for the future expansion to rounds 2,3 and beyond if viable
But, meantime, please consider the above and revert (we hope) agreeing to participate
Should you need to ask any question re this or if you have any suggestions, please email us at [email protected]
We look forward to plenty of positive responses and thank you in anticipation of same and will decide on actually proceeding based on the take-up from this mail
Yours in the Cause!
NDCAG
PS: Apologies for only being in English. If you want it in Afrikaans, request same to [email protected] and we’ll send you a translator version – which may not be entirely accurate