We do use local printers because of a strong buy-local ethic around here. I'm not sure why the online printers are so much cheaper, unless it's just economy of scale.

What about saving money elsewhere - can you re-examing the mailing plan, maybe combine more info on fewer mailings, or merge pieces of collateral (like say the brochure and the calendar) into one? That way, maybe you could make the same budget do the same job and support localism, as well.

Do your rack cards really work for you? We have them because you sort of feel obligated to do so, but we know it's not the main piece that brings people to our door. So we've stopped updating it all the time, we refer to the website and leave it very generic.

Yeah, I've never thought the rack cards were particularly useful, but in a tourist town like this one, you have to do it. We do have zillions of purely generic ones still around (and they were done locally a year or two ago - by some weird place that mostly prints golf stuff & wanted to branch out, go figure, they were totally cheap but I think they may have since disappeared.) This is a specific one for our big fundraiser gem & mineral show in June. Last year I did it at the copy shop: just xeroxed black onto green card stock, trimmed there, looked like hell and cost $350 for 3000 cards. This year I'm doing it full color online - $200. I mean, there's just no comparison. We've already combined everything that can be combined, unfortunately, and in fact I go ahead and do a lot of stuff right here in the office - if it's less than 200 copies; it's done here.

I've now done two postcards & a rack card with the online people and they've all been great and about half the price they would have been here. I still do the newsletter and the school and camp brochures - the big stuff - with local but I'm starting to think I might switch. I mean, 2 color newsletter, 8 pages, recycled paper, 500 copies: $750. If I could do that for $400 or $500? I could do so much with the extra money - buy ads for a change. Gah. I hate these choices.

Yeah, that's a tough position.

How can the online places be so much cheaper?

Probably low overhead (I bet they don't spend a whole lot of their labor hours on customer service, for example-- good luck getting satisfaction or even an apology when they fuck up your order) combined with economy of scale.

But why not ask one of the local places with which you have a good relationship to see if they can at least come close to the on-line printer's prices? Explain your problem and your limited budget see if they can help you find a solution to stay local. What do you have to lose?

My uncle use to own his own print shop and the majority of his business were from people who were loyal customers, liked his work, and from orders where the cost of shipping a large bound item was cost prohibative. A cheap one off flyer isn't where the money is - it's the almancs, telephone directories, church membership newsletters and the like that bring in steady business.

Also, with a local printer, there are times when you can get a rush order in a day or two. With online orders, depending on the item, that's not always possible.

Our organization uses local printers. We're on the donating-funds side, where money's less of an object than it looking high-quality. So it may be that your donors are doing their part to offset the money migration.

I do realize that seems really backwards. Maybe you could apply for a marketing grant. Do they have marketing grants? Or does that fall into the evil "overhead" category and therefore we must pretend it's evil and unnecessary, even while deriding non-profits for not being able to make their own money?

The local printers can't match those prices and they know it. I've tried to ask them if they'll come down but they just look glum and walk off. I think Stynxno has it though and I feel less guilty - I mean, we're doing small runs at best - there have to be other, for-profit, local businesses who use the local printers. I know the one that I don't like, that I switched away from way back because their prices were outrageous, is still there and thriving despite me decamping with the newsletter. ;-)

Ah yes, occhiblu, we're not allowed to have general operating support! No non profit is! Why, insisting on receiving our meagre paychecks at all is just greed! Hehe. Yeah. It's funny because it's true. Actually, a year or so ago we did get a small marketing grant from IMLS - one of those planning thingies where people from other museums come and critique you - but frankly I don't think the funds were worth the sitting around with those people for three whole days.

Evil profit-grubbing non-profits! :-)

We're an association (technically non-profit, but kind of a different world) and we have to use a local printer. But that's because we do a lot of training and all of our course materials are printed on demand by our printer and shipped directly to our course sites. Plus all of our other things - brochures, catalogs, membership applications - are warehoused and inventoried by them and that way we can just request whatever we need at a given time. There's no way an online place could give us the kind of service we get from our printers.