Discussion with Eoban Binder on the Indiana Atheist Bus Campaign

Begins @ 1PM.

*Update* It appears Eoban is a delayed, reason unknown. Please check back in 5-10 minutes to see if he shows up.

*Update 2* It's now 1:31PM EST and Eoban has still not arrived on the forum. I will email him all of your questions along with the set of questions I have prepared. Once he responds to them I will post them on here and also see why he didn't show up. Hopefully nothing serious has happened to him to prevent him from showing up. I apologize to everyone that has shown up to view this discussion.

*Update 3* He is here, ignore previous updates and read below.

Originally Posted by eobanb

I'm here! Sorry about that.

Ok great, lets get this show rolling.

To get things started, why don't you briefly explain to us why Indiana needed an atheist bus campaign and why you personally have put so much time and effort into creating this successful campaign.

Ah yes we had our difference in Canada over which slogan and/or cause to choose as well.

One of your goals for this campaign was to raise $50,000 for advertising. Your website shows you have only raised $11,495 in donations since your campaign began in February. Do you think you set the bar too high? Or is $50,000 more of an overall lifetime goal? And if that is the case, how long do you plan to run this campaign?

Originally Posted by eobanb

You're absolutely right that $50,000 was a high goal to set. The $11,495 figure that appears on our website is actually now slightly outdated (for the record), but of course, your point still stands.

We chose the $50,000 figure because raising at least that much would be the ideal outcome for our campaign; it would enable us to run ads in many cities throughout the state and/or region.

Yes, it is unlikely that we will reach $50,000, at least in the near term. Since we have no other operating expenses aside from our web hosting, however, I see no reason why the campaign can't continue indefinitely, and ads be put up as we have money to pay for them.

That's very good that you will continue, I wish we continued up here in Canada but the charity I was working with had other items on their agenda.

Have you guys ever considered going national rather than only a state wide campaign?

Originally Posted by eobanb

Yes, we have considered going national. Arguably we are already a 'national' campaign since we decided to advertise in Chicago, which is on the Indiana border but really in Illinois.

We have even considered advertising in even more religious areas, such as Dallas, TX, but as it turns out there are already other campaigns forming to do that (e.g. the Metroplex Atheists). Because of this we consider one of the secondary goals of our campaign--to inspire other campaigns to form--fulfilled already.

Ah that's a great idea. One of our forum members was also inspired by your campaign to start her own.

I think you briefly touched on this earlier, but after reading through one of your blog posts, it appears there was some dispute between organizers about which advertisement should be used in Chicago. You have two slogans now, "In the Beginning Man Created God" and "You can be good without God". Can you explain to us why you chose two different ads and also why you didn't go with the well known "probably no God" slogan? Also, has one had more impact than the other?