Donations and Membership

After much discussion and consideration, we are going to attempt an experiment with “open membership.” How does this work? The idea is that anyone is welcome to self-adopt the status of being a member as long as that person is interested in Poe's life and/or writings and seeks to pursue our mission of enjoying and spreading that interest. We also graciously accept donations freely offered, with no direct connection between these things being required. Doing so eliminates the constant money-grubbing that so often becomes a self-feeding process, one that can consume a small non-profit organization and become a focus that overwhelms other efforts.

We have also provided a Square payment option for donations. (Please note that donations will automatically deduct a small fee required by Square to process the transaction.)

Donate

Credit card payments can be accepted only online, through the donate button. Checks, made payable to the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore can be mailed to:

Additional donations are always welcome. If you require an acknowledgment of your contributions for your records, please enclose a S.A.S.E.

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The Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore is a legally registered charity (501c3). Your gift to our organization is fully tax-deductible in the US. We thank you for your generous support. The Poe Society of Baltimore is not affiliated with Poe Baltimore, a separate entity that runs the Baltimore Poe House and Museum. Poe Baltimore has its own website.

Note that the Poe Society does not create Gofundme pages, and does not sanction — nor is connected with — any such pages using our name.

 

Why are we doing an “open membership”? For its first 100 years, the Poe Society of Baltimore had an annual membership mailing. With the cost of postage and making copies of the ballot, newsletter and program increasing every year, the traditional means of staying in contact with our members has grown to be quite expensive. It is also a major investment of time and labor to create and prepare the initial mailing and then to process responses and maintain a database of addresses. (It is amazing how many people seem to move every year.) The format of the mailing has changed somewhat over the years, in part to conform to evolving Post Office requirements.

In 2024, we prepared the annual mailing as usual, and put 330 letters with first class postage in standard #10 window envelopes, pre-printed with our name and return address — and the US Postal Service managed to lose the entire mailing. A formal complaint was filed, and an investigation supposedly launched, but, not surprisingly, no result or explanation was every forthcoming. Consequently, it became clear that a physical mailing that depended on the post office was no longer practical.

There had already been some initial thoughts on trying to convert to a digital membership, but the evident inability of relying on the Post Office pushed the idea beyond a mere hypothetical question. Thus began some ardent research into the possibility of moving in the digital direction. At first, this idea seemed generally good, but as we looked into it, it also comes with its own costs and complications. It is one thing to accept donations online, and another to maintain an active database of email addresses, ideally one that can be changed by members themselves. Tying the two together is trickier, and companies that support such services are happy to demand a healthy fee, which is not really practical for something that is done only once a year. In the end, we have decided to rethink the whole idea of membership.

The primary mission of the Poe Society has always been to provide information about Poe's life and writings, to make Poe's writings freely available to anyone looking for a bit of literary entertainment, but always with the hope of encouraging readers to dig a little deeper than the handful of poems and horror tales, and beyond the popular mythological Poe. With the arrival of the Internet, satisfying this mission was no longer limited to active members in direct physical contact; indeed, it was now possible to reach a world-wide audience, and arguably we have done exactly that. As a result, the meaning of “membership” has fundamentally shifted. The question is often asked what benefits come with membership, and the answer has long been a somewhat puzzling “the sense of belonging and supporting our efforts.” Those two things remain true, even without a more traditional annual membership drive.