Answering E-mail Info

Progressive Portal receives e-mail of all types: recommendations for new letter-writing topics and Web links, suggested changes to the site, problems, volunteer offers, requests to link to our site, and much more. We have no paid staff for answering these letters.

Human communication is a critical value at Progressive Portal. We don't want to leave users with just a canned automated response.

Volunteers will each be assigned one particular topic area for handling letters, and given instructions on how to handle them. In addition to writing a reply to the sender, the volunteer will often have some further work to do. For example, for recommended site improvements, the volunteer will compile the suggestions into a database or spreadsheet that we can reference as we continue to evolve Progressive Portal.

This requires good writing skills, a high degree of diplomacy (we want users to know they are respected, valued, and attended to), even when dealing with "crank" letters or correspondence from right-wing critics.