The LP has—always—had a “free” membership category. Since its inception. In 1972.

I was an employee at LPHQ (1989-1993) when we were still offering “Instant Member” cards in bundles of 100 via the LP literature sales catalog. It was a simple postcard with a tear-off part that you kept, which was a wallet-card sized thing. It said what any membership card would say, had a place for you to sign it, and the back side had the statement of principles.

The part you didn’t keep was a standard business-reply post card. The membership statement was there with a place for you to sign it, and of course it had space to enter name, address, and other contact info. Being business reply, it was even free for the signer to mail.

After several years of pushing the “free” memberships, however, the LNC at the time took a look at the effectiveness of marketing the “instant member” category—and determined that normal prospect lists (ie names gathered at gun shows and college fairs and the like) had a better “conversion” rate than the “Instant” names. As a result, the LNC decided to stop marketing the category.

You could still join as a free member, but other than filing the signature in a portable file box with the signatures of others and noting on the national LP database that the person had signed, free members were not pursued further. As stated, their response rate was extremely low. And LPHQ no longer marketed it as an option.

[Interestingly, LPHQ staff revealed that their experience was the same in the first months of 2006 under the so-called “zero dues” regime—free members generally don’t ever wind up donating to the Party. I suspect few free members (if any) volunteer, either.]

Throughout the nineties, there were still a few people who took advantage of the ability to recruit free members. I did so (normally only with people I suspected I personally would eventually convert into donors). The last “signature only” (ie free) member I recruited and submitted to LPHQ was 2006; in January. By February, I had collected a donation from him.

I have a copy of one of the last correct national membership reports that now-departed LPHQ staff distributed in April of 2004. Most of the staff who knew how to generate these reports were dismissed from LPHQ shortly after that. These reports counted all the people who had ever signed the LP membership pledge as of the report date.

On the archived report mentioned above, there were 19,276 people who had signed & paid; 69,831 who had signed and paid at one time but who had “lapsed”, and 26,294 FREE members. These 26k free members were “lost” by LPHQ:

When Geoff Neale put LPHQ on the new Raiser’s Edge database as of 09/14/2004, he failed to retain the signature status of the Non-Contributing members (the 26,294 number). LPHQ still has the names on the database, just no signature flag. I have suggested to current LPHQ staff several times that they fire up the old database and recapture those signature flags, if only to improve accuracy, but they have not done it so far.

In any case, if you take the number Cory says have signed (105,000) and add the missing 26,294, there are actually over 131,000 people who have signed the LP’s pledge—and every one of them is a “member”—just not necessarily a “Sustaining” member. I think using that number is entirely appropriate.

The LP uses dues-paying members only internally, as it should. The Democrats and Republiboobs don’t EVER reveal how many donors they have, why should we?

Externally, HQ counts everyone who ever signed the pledge. I’ve actually been trying to get all Libertarians to do this for a long time. It is entirely accurate to state that “135,000 Americans have signed the Libertarian Party’s membership pledge”, and it sounds a hell of a lot better than “12,000…”.

In fact when I was doing a lot of radio interviews, when asked how many LP members there were, my answer was always “there are over a quarter-million registered Libertarians in the dozen-odd states where it is legal to register Libertarian.” This got it into the discussion that there were more Libertarians than could fit into a phone booth—and at the same time slip into the conversation that registration is discriminatory in many states. It was bait which most of my interviewers managed to catch and bite, giving me an opportunity to discuss our Soviet ballot access laws.

But when talking to my fellow members, I always use the number of “current” donors.

Nowadays, Cory’s reports seem to be honest. He produces one report that just shows the total number of donors. As of 11/30/07, he says there are 14,017 donors. He produces a second report that breaks down the number of free & sustaining members vs nonmember subscribers.

That’s sufficent. At least with some primary-school adding and subtracting, you can figure out what the real member/subscriber/free numbers are.

MHW, Vancouver, WA

More than 3000 Americans were murdered since 9/11—by whites, blacks, and browns, by Jews and Christians and atheists. Murderers come in every color and religion and non-religion.

Yet when you single out one group for “war”—something you don’t do to groups— one may call your response bigoted and irrational.

Some small-l libertarians will find a great deal of humor in your (presumably unintentional) statement that “Reigning in our government (at the local, state and federal levels) is why I am here working in the LP”.

Presumably, you meant reining

I am a LP Diehard – I will not change a thing that I am doing to grow the LP. Ron Paul is irrelevant to my efforts to grow the LP into an effective political alternative to the R’s & D’s in Kansas and elsewhere.

Hard work (mine with the hard work of others recruited by my efforts) is the reason the LP is growing in Kansas.

Ron Paul is simply a recently well-known libertarian movement messenger. (recently well known to those outside the libertarian movement anyway)

I worked to grow the Libertarian Party long before the recent Ron Paul presidential candidacy was a newsworthy item.
I have and continue to grow the LP with Ron Paul running as a Republican.
I will grow the LP with Ron Paul running as a Constitution Party candidate (if that happens).
I will grow the LP with Ron Paul running as a Libertarian Party candidate (if that happens).
I will grow the LP long after the current Ron Paul hysteria and hype is forgotten.
Ron Paul was never the reason I do what I do as a LP supporter and no one presidential (or other) candidate will ever be that reason.

Reigning in our government (at the local, state and federal levels) is why I am here working in the LP.

Those that have tried to work inside the R or D parties for change have failed miserably. I believe that our only hope is to bring a viable third party into the political mix. While I am a realist and know that in Kansas the LP is not a major political factor today – it will be in time.

Long-term hard work in the political arena – not an “I found my 15 minutes of fame” candidate, is what it will take to change our government to make it better!

(But is he talking about sustaining members or members by another definition? In 2006 the bylaws committee crafted language to allow the LP to claim registered Libertarians and oath signers as members while creating the term sustaining members for those who pay dues.)

Then again, maybe the 2006 platform reforms are having an effect…

Maybe.

If Ron Paul goes Constitution Party, what will that do to LP membership? What will that do to LP fundraising efforts?

And conversely, you’ll see CP efforts soar.

If RP goes CP, how many of you LP diehards here will join him and send in $25.00 to the Constitutionalists?

Answer: Radical Muslims

You wanna run that by me again? What was that you said, something to the effect of “irrational fear”?

When 3,000 of your fellow countrymen are killed by Radical Muslims and some of us Americans wish to respond and fight back, you label that as “irrational”?

I’ll need to get more information to fully understand the claims of National’s press release. Thanks for sticking to your guns and challenging me on this one. I may have spoken too soon. Perhaps there’s some mixed reporting of categories going on (which may or may not change the facts, but might change the perceptions—or something like that). I need to make sure what’s going on here myself. Regards.

“National does not go back to everyone who has ever signed the pledge and count them as members.”

When did they stop doing this?

Tom, go read the actual press release linked above. The figure of 105,000 members is given. There is no way in hell there are that many members that have donated $25 or more in the last year.

Wes, I don’t remember you quoting any numbers. George Phillies stated the number a while back. It was about 16,000 I think. So, are there about 20,000 contributing members now? Why is there so little transparency about these numbers?

Austin,

Membership is distributed to us by National that lists active members as those who have donated $25+ or have signed the pledge after the membership definition change (they are marked differently in the database). National does not go back to everyone who has ever signed the pledge and count them as members.

When the change was made, we had very few “zero dues members”. This figure has slowly but surely increased since then, and now makes up about 20% of the overall membership in my state.