The JustPost platform was developed and launched in 2024 by Duane Raymond and Nathaniel Ashford.
Having been pioneers of digital campaigning in the early 2000s while at Oxfam (Duane) and ActionAid (Nathaniel), they already had experience of making online actions physical via Fax actions, tablet petitions at events, postcard distributions as well as email actions.
By the 2015, online petitions and emails were so overused that they were no longer getting the attention they once did. In fact, the century old tactic of printed letters and postcards and even craftivism were increasingly geting decision makers' attention.
Duane started to look out for other approaches like craftivism and beyond. Some organisations like Oxfam ran one-off printed postcard actions developed by agencies, but they were hard to re-use for other actions.
In 2017, Duane partnered with Martin Loat, the founder of PostBug, to trial digital-to-print actions. While the PostBug platform was a B2C offering, Duane was able to adapt it to be a B2B offering for the campaigning sector. So he and Nataniel developed and launched the JustPost platform in early 2024 developed from the ground-up to cater to the needs of campaigners.
Digitally enabled traditional communications like printed postcards and letters paradoxically become more powerful in the digital world as digital communication becomes dominant. Their power comes not only from the fact that so few people receive printed postcards and letters these days, but it can be touched, put up on the wall, passed around, left on a desk, doesn't require recharging and more.
The results speak for themselves: decision makers notice and respond, supporters love not only sending them, but are willing to help pay for them, campaigners appreciate their novelty. When it really counts, printed post delivers.
As a pioneer of digital campaigning since the early 2000s, Duane introduced to the UK and Europe (via his work at Oxfam) many of practices we now take for granted: online petitions, emails to decision makers, faxing MPs (= sending blurry paper over a very slow connection), using social networks and many of the practices that go with those. Yet he always yearned for a tools to be a bridge back to the physical world. He advised and operated a simple postcard platform called PostBug until 2023 and then took the leap to develop a new platform better suited to the needs of campaigners.
Whereas the original PostBug was a public platform for individuals to use (B2C) to send postcards and letters to not only decision makers, but to celebrities and beyond, Duane had a hunch there was high potential for postcards to be used by campaigning groups as they had the content, the supporter base and the budget to make it work.
Duane's founded his business FairSay in 2004 after leaving Oxfam with the aim of helping other organisations be more effective at using digital strategies, practices and tools. He organises the UK's longest running campaigning event for practitioners: the Campaigning Forum (formerly the eCampaigning Forum). He is Canadian-born and left Canada in 1994 to live and work around the world. He has three amazing children which he has had the privilege of being a hands-on father to from a young age.