Have something you’d like to say to President Donald Trump? You can, of course, turn to Twitter. But a new Chicago startup is working to make it easier than ever to communicate with elected government officials the old fashioned way—via snail mail.
Get Loud Now, which just launched in June, makes an online platform where anyone in the U.S. can pick a postcard, write a message on it and mail it to any elected official, all the way from officials in the President's cabinet to the local alderman in your city.
The startup was founded by Jude Goergen and Jeremiah Seraphine, the founder and CEO of Groovebug, a Chicago startup that made a music platform, which ultimately shut down in 2015.
Get Loud Now, which has offices in tech and startup incubator 1871, charges users $1.80 to send a single postcard, with a portion of the proceeds going to the artist that designed the card. The startup works with several art organizations, including the Englewood Arts Collective and the National Youth Art Movement Against Gun Violence.
Postcard designs range from images that represent Black Lives Matter and pro-marijuana legislation to some of the most shocking quotes from Trump.
Trump is the No. 1 official users choose to send postcards to on Get Loud Now and Vice President Mike Pence is right behind him, according to data from the startup. No one has reported hearing back from them yet, but some users have heard from other elected officials, including Illinois Senator Tammy Duckworth.
Seraphine said he first got the idea to launch Get Loud Now after Trump enacted the travel ban, which to many seemed like a specific ban on Muslim travelers entering the U.S.
“We have Muslim friends and it was something that was really offensive to us,” Seraphine said. “We started looking for ways to voice our frustration and our discontent. The first inclination was to scream into social media ... but it’s kind of an echo chamber.”
That’s when Seraphine decided the best way to be heard by elected officals was to contact them directly. But between finding the correct phone numbers and emails, it became too much of a hassle, which is why he thought a seamless platform like Get Loud Now was needed.
“We definitely think there’s a need for people to become more engaged politically,” Seraphine said. “A lot of people want to be engaged politically, they just don’t know how. They don’t know who their elected representative is and they don’t know how to contact them.”
Seraphine said users can write anything they want on a postcard, but that in order to instill some accountability, all real names and addresses of senders will be used.
In the future, Seraphine said the startup plans to donate a quarter of its profits to organizations with a social or political mission that is in line with the founders’ values. So far, the startup has been self-funded, but Seraphine said he will eventually fundraise.
“I wanted to fund it ourselves until we got to the product and company we really wanted before the infusion of capital begins distorting decision-making,” Seraphine said.
Get Loud Now’s advisory board is made up of individuals who’ve worked in politics, design, art and technology. They include Caleb Gardner, who served as a digital strategist under President Barack Obama, Katie Barr of Washington, D.C.-based public affairs agency Glen Echo Group, Todd Warren, a former Microsoft executive who is currently a Northwestern University innovation professor, and Saira Alikhan, a former Assistant State’s Attorney for Illinois.
Ultimately, Seraphine said he hopes Get Loud Now encourages more citizens to get politically engaged, and not just on the federal level. He said he hopes the platform facilitates communication on the local and state level, too.
“If you live in a neighborhood and you know a stop sign is going to make a difference in keeping your kids safe, having a way to organize your neighbors to contact your local representatives can be really powerful,” Seraphine said. “Giving the average citizen a way to quickly have their voice heard is really important.”
