The LNC National Director today released the membership number for the past two months. Membership numbers were modestly higher than I had estimated from the Treasurer’s Report graph. Membership is still falling, but the decline is happening more slowly than before:
Membership loss decelerates.
End of November 2024: 11731
End of April 9794
End of May 9595
End of June 9517
Instead of stressing issues, which we already know and care about, it’s time to go back to basics and stress organizational issues.
1. 7 total renewal LETTERS (emails don’t count), up to 3 before they lapse and up to 4 after they lapse.
2. Direct MAIL fundraising pieces to current donors and lapsed at least 4-7 times a year. I have only received 3 in the last THREE YEARS and they all came in the Fall of 2023–nothing since! Money for Ballot Access would be something we (99%) can all agree on! Stress the monthly pledge program, which allows us to plan intelligently. Student Organizing to plant seeds for the future. Prospecting to replenish our ranks.
3. Re-institute the LNC fundraising committee. Dedicated volunteers, working with a Development Director on staff, to find professional companies to conduct telemarketing, direct mail, face to face meetings, wills and grants, etc. Our fundraising committee went defunct over 2 years ago.
4. We’ve been talking about “building the groundwork for Archimedes” for a year. Start up Archimedes, and eat that elephant one bite at a time. Begin with tests to 1000 registered LP voters in the 30 states where you can register LP. Whichever states respond positively, do a “rollout”. Test the LP Prospects list by the year they reached out to us Test Reason lists, LP Facebook followers, Institute for Justice, CATO, and any other libertarian think tanks that would sell us their list.
5. Start printing and mailing LP News to current members (and donors). What do people get for their memberships? A membership card and the good feeling of helping a great cause. Consider, if you will, rational self interest: We want to see something every couple months. A steady and attractive newsletter will give us credibility. I haven’t see an LP News in 3 years.
If we have to choose paper letters or emails, choose paper. Email is a cop out. You can’t touch it. It disappears in a day. You’re not going to have an email sit on your desk waiting for the day you pay your bills. We need to flood the Libertarian lists with envelopes!!
My opinion has changed over the years regarding LP News. I used to love but, but then I remember the last couple years, getting LP News in the mail and thinking “dang, this is old news!” It seems like it took so long to produce and mail that everything in it was stale by the time it landed in my mailbox.
That said, I see a place for something LP News-like as a recruiting tool, something that could be used while tabling at events, fairs and the like. While it could still be called LP News, it wouldn’t necessarily be breaking stuff but instead be the greatest hits of the last few months that the party would want highlighted to newbies – and would only need to be re-published perhaps 2x/year.
Agree LP News should come in print format…not email.
But LP is operating in the red…so not feasible right now.
LP News mailed with donation envelope ran in the black.
Interesting.
You know more about fundraising than I ever will, George.
To me, this has been the best idea I’ve heard yet to reach out to lapsed sustaining members.
My source is Robert Kraus.
I am not going to debate this with you but I respectively disagree. I’ve been in the party for 45 years and have done everything except be a treasurer. I have also spent those 45 years as a manager, and supervisor in retail sales and in my opinion the LP has done a poor job of providing the training and tools to do the job. I have something like 700 hours working booths at outreach events where I heard some very poor replies to inquires. I am not going to be around that much longer but promoting respect, prosperity, justice, and peace isn’t as difficult as the LP is making it.
If you turn those numbers into percentages, does the decline look less steep?
It looks steeper than it does now, because the denominator is shrinking.
The LNC needs to get serious about promoting specific issues. If done correctly membership and donors just might increase.
1. Bring the troops home may get the U.S. out of some of the problems it has stumbled into and plan a withdrawal of 20 years.
2. End zoning laws, these laws appear to cost the nation about $2 trillion annually. That is $6K per capita. These laws are racist in origin and harm low-income people the worst.
3. Support alternative urban transit. Opening this market to competition can reduce taxes and the need for the safety net to some extent and bring more opportunities to people, especially low income people.
4. End the drug war. This needs to be promoted heavily again. The LP needs to be in the front on this one.
5. The National Debt is Child Abuse. End it. This is a disaster waiting to happen. GET LOUD on this!
These do not cost a lot to promote and will help improve the LP’s public image. These laws and policies are anti prosperity and contribute to poverty and the need for a safety net.
END
Gee, so now we’re at: “There’s an avalanche approaching & not only is there a bunch of very very large boulders about to land on our heads – no worries – it’s falling at a lesser rate than the last avalanche so if we weren’t stuck in this damn quicksand we could possibly only get crushed by a few of those falling rocks & not completely buried.”
Reminds me of AM when she would claim the improvements were just around the corner because the declining revenue & membership was slowing & she has her ear to the ground & can hear the stampede of big donors about to appear – but then a few months later we find out it was a train & they got ran over!
Good news is membership can only decline to about the level of lifers – which will only decline as folks drop dead. But since they never run NCOA’s any more including death notices – that will slow the decline for a bit!
Has there ever been a dive in membership or a unpopular presidential candidate?
There was also a steep dive in membership in the 1980s, after the moderate Koch faction walked away and left control of the party to Rothbard’s Radicals. Back then “libertarians” like Justin Raimondo and Eric Garris were telling Libertarians to walk away from the party to support Reagan. They ran ads in LP News saying this. After Rothbard and Rockwell invented PaleoLibertarianism, those same “libertarians” became Paleo and backed Pat Buchanan in 1992. And they used messaging designed to appeal to white nationalist followers of David Duke.
Very similar to now, where the moderates who supported Johnson are gone and control of the party is in the hands of the PaleoLibertarian Mises Caucus. Those “libertarians” have told us to support Trump, sometimes using official party communications tools to do so. And they use the same sort of inflammatory language designed to appeal to bigots.
One difference: The Mises Caucus today are simps for Russia.
With respect for Mr. Phillies, that’s the “we’ve been here before” analog that I see.
Chase isn’t the reason membership has declined.
lol.
Pay attention.