A reader writes with regard to all the data on Voice of the Faithful’s membership:
The Globe article says their survey had responses from 1,300 “members” nationwide.
In their most recent election (Nov-December 2004), 1596 “members” cast ballots (and I was one of them!) [Dom says: In other words, they’re not all “members.”] http://www.votf.org/election/2004/results.html
In their previous election (late 2003, results announced January 2004), 1,048 “members” cast ballots
http://www.votf.org/vineyard/vineyard0104/election.htmlWhat’s this say?!?
I guess if it were me, I wouldn’t even give them credit for 28,000 members. It’s more like a thousand and change who actually give a hoot enough to vote in an election. Compare this vs the Knights of Columbus with nearly 11000 councils and 1.6 million members.
LOL! I voted in both of those elections and I am also still on their mailing list. The mailings must cost them a fortune as they are always on high quality material.
Looks like the real number of VOTFers hovers maybe around 1,000 – give or take a few to account for the fake members like me.
I don’t think I was tapped for the recent survey although I could have circular filed, without opening, the form if they mailed it out. I think it is telling that they claim 30K members and less than 5% (1300 according to the Globe) bothered to respond. I don’t think they were thinking straight when they mentioned how few made up the survey.
With numbers like that, it’s hard for VOTF to claim that they are more representative than the Hierarchy. It’s even hard for them to claim that they are larger than the Hierarchy.