Presented at the 2024 Unity Southwest Region Conference Business Meeting
Reverend Donna Johnson gathered personal experiences and created a book of testimonials about how Unity has positively impacted people's lives.
It ended up being no cost to the church, but offers another way to share the message of their community, and Unity, with the world. We at the Alhambra Foundation thought it was a great idea that other centers could utilize as outreach or fundraising.
Download the one-sheet for yourself, or read on!
How long did it take to compile the stories? About 3 months to compile and 3 months more to publish. Some stories came in handwritten and had to be put in digital form. A few people came to my office and dictated to me. And some digital stories were incompatible with my old computer.
Who did the compilation? I did the compilation and the editing
Who typed it all up? Yours truly.
Did you self-publish? or through whom? We self-published through Amazon Kindle…paperback only. Unity in the Valley is the publisher and all profits go to the church.
What were the costs to bring it to publication? I hired someone to help me with graphic design, formatting, etc. She was my coach for publishing my personal book. Because I did the editing, instead of her staff, the cost was about $1800 as opposed to $2200.
Did you do a fund-raiser to help cover the cost? No fundraiser. I simply divided the cost by the number of stories and announced it, saying since it would be a legacy fundraiser for the church, the church would absorb the cost. There was never any cost required to submit a story, yet every person who contributed a story voluntarily paid their share, so the church paid nothing. And some people with no story contributed to the effort as well.
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