On What Good LNC At-Large Members Do With Their Time

An Editorial from Tom Rowlette

Hello Libertarians. This is the eleventh of a series of opinion articles I’ll be privileged to write for you once per month on an “inside baseball” topic for the Libertarian Party. I encourage everyone who has an opinion on whatever we’re talking about this month to comment or send phillies@4liberty.net your longer editorials, which may very well be published.

By my count, at least five people have already announced their candidacy for Chair of the Libertarian National Committee, but far fewer have announced their intention to fill an at-large or regional representative spot. If history is any guide, most people who run for one of those positions will decide they want it during the convention instead of beforehand. I’d like to get people thinking about it a little earlier. In service of that, we should take a look at what the job actually entails.

The first thing to notice about it is that an at-large or regional representative spot is not an award. People should certainly have a history in the LP before they’re trusted with one of those positions, but it’s not an equivalent to a Hall of Liberty or Patrick Henry prize. Instead, you’re signing up to do work. And it’s in the nexus of work which is important but not often thanked or even noticed, so you have to be internally motivated by seeing the results of what you’ve accomplished rather than by the accolades of your peers.

But what will you be doing with your time, and about how much of it will you be spending? The hard truth is that different members of the LNC put in different amounts of time on different tasks, and there’s not much accountability for a job done well or poorly. But if someone is a good LNC member, they’re mostly doing some amount of each of four things, with different people having more emphasis on some areas than others.

Those four things:

1) Know the budget backwards and forwards, and make responsible and informed decisions about how the national party’s money is spent

2) Attend at least 90% (100% is golden) of LNC meetings

(Hidden task) Don’t make other committee members super stressed out or angry

Some of those are a lot more work than others, and some of them are a lot more fun than others. For most of them the committee will be made up of people both part of and not part of the LNC, so if you don’t want to be on the LNC itself but one of those tasks looks like something you would be good at, please do apply to be on one or more of those subcommittees.

What’s the overall time commitment an LNC member should be willing to make? I’ve asked different people that question, and the general idea that I get is that the bare minimum is about 5 hours per month. The maximum someone should expect to give, if they pay close attention to the budget, attend every LNC meeting, are on two difficult subcommittees, and consistently make fundraising calls, is about 40 hours per month, or ten hours per week. Try to give more than that and they’ll burn themselves out. Somewhere between those two extremes is where most people should end up, and if everybody’s pulling their weight the job gets easier and actually kind of pleasant.

That’s the volunteer work, which is the most active part of the job. But focusing only on that misses an important aspect of what LNC members should be. I’m going to quote someone here without attribution, but this person is an expert. A good LNC member knows

“…their role is oversight and overall direction, not management or execution. Good brand ambassadors, histories with finances or achieving goals or something that brings credibility to the org. Team member rather than in it for themselves or ambassador for others.”

The LNC has historically been “about” two things, and broadly those two things don’t overlap. One section is all the super-volunteer work that needs to be done, and the other is the decision making part. If I had to choose, I would rather have people who are better at making decisions than people who are super-volunteers, but a good mix of both traits makes the ideal member.

That’s the whole job, as far as I can tell. If you would be great at one part of it and at least OK at the others, I think you should run for a spot. And if you’re going to be a delegate at the national convention in a few months, I think you should take an idea of what the job entails into consideration when you’re voting for who you want to be on the LNC.