Comments:

As a 501(c)(3) organization, the Minnesota Safety Council depends on e-communication to provide an efficient, expedient and cost-effective way to communicate with our members and others about unintentional injuries and the services we provide to help prevent them. Our members and others with whom we communicate have responded very favorably to e-communication. E-mail has allowed us to free up significant dollars we once spent on printing and distributing hard copy to support our family safety programs, projects and activities. We applaud the FTC for addressing the thorny issue of regulating offensive unsolicited e-mail. But please don't make it difficult for us to communicate with our members and members of the public who need injury prevention information Don't make it difficult for our members and the public to receive life-saving information from us. E-communication to members and others with whom a not-for-profit organization has an established relationship should be exempt from restrictions being proposed by the FTC which would require obtaining express permission from our members and others we serve to e-communicate with them. That places a heavy burden on organizations such as ours which operate lean on staff and focused on mission-related activities. We strongly support a requirement that not-for-profit organizations provide an easy opt-out mechanism that must be honored within a brief period of time (ten days seems excessively long). Thank you for the opportunity to comment - and, again, for tackling a tough issue. As a recipient of what seem like thousands of offensive and downright annoying e-solicitations, I'm eager to see regulation to make those go away. But, again, in your zeal to help consumers clear their e-mail boxes of trashy e-mails, please don't hamper or place an unnecessary burden on organizations like ours, whose members appreciate and respond well to e-communication. We depend on e-communication to help us maximize the very scarce resources we have to work for the public good.