What the LNC Should Do
Opinion by Scott Kohlhaus
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!!
The party always has money coming in. It must budget and commit to testing 1000 LP registrants at a time–even if it’s just once a month–and then fundraise around it. No need to bankrupt the party with 700,000 mail pieces all at once–just constant prospecting within our budget..
Last September, in a conference call to the Alaska LP, Michael Heise.was throwing around the “Archimedes” word. They know what to say to placate us, they’re just not doing it.
Thanks for what you are doing.
Seven renewal letters is a bit much. Frankly, everything important that I receive I switched to electronic. I don’t even check my US Mail box for weeks at a time because it’s *all* junk mail. I’d say one renewal letter before and one after would be fine, and then do the other four or five via e-mail.
(That said, I do have to share that when the Mises Coup occurred, I e-mailed National to resign my membership. Not only did I never receive a reply acknowledging receipt of my email and processing of my resignation, I’ve never received any sort of US Mail correspondence ever again from National. They didn’t even try to engage in any service recovery. Their feeling was basically “You resigned? Fine! Go away!”)
Seven letters was the number determined experimentally. A competent LNC, should we someday get one, will keep tabs on responses to letters and see if circumstances have changed, but historically the point of negative return was letter eight.
Scott K has some great ideas on membership recruitment. The retro/mail approach can’t be beat by e-mail. Hopefully the tech-heavy LP will be able to recognize that sometimes the old solutions to a problem are the best solutions to a problem.
Scott Kohlhass!
I’ve been reading old issues of LP News. Thank you so much for getting the Libertarian Party of Missouri restarted back in 1979!
At some point I’ll email you or give you a call about it, because all the info I can find on what all happened is fairly cryptic. Meanwhile, thanks 🙂 I’m glad Ed Clark was on the ballot here, and I’m glad the current version of the Missouri LP exists.