[Lnc-business] Policy Manual provision regarding 2.5% of budgeted revenue

Joshua Katz planning4liberty at gmail.com
Sun Oct 11 11:52:43 EDT 2015


I share many of these same concerns.  I would appreciate hearing from the
IT Committee or the Chair as to just how much we anticipate upgrading the
website will cost.

As I said before, I think it is unavoidable to spend money updating our
literature and materials with our new logo.  As Mr. Benedict later
clarified, it would also be pointless, in my opinion, to refuse to purchase
stock to replace items that have sold quickly - if you're selling hotcakes,
flour is an expense, but it makes sense to allocate more money to flour if
it results in more sales.

As the Secretary points out, I don't know where we are on the website
redesign.  It seems there are two things being discussed:  incorporating
the new logo, and redesigning the site in its entirety.  Certainly the
latter will cost more, but if it's going to be done, couldn't the logo
incorporation be done along with it?  How much will the latter cost?  If it
costs more than we've allocated for IT, wouldn't it require a vote of the
LNC, making it problematic to tell donors it will be done if they donate?
We could always return the money, but history doesn't support the
likelihood of this, nor is it an approach likely to endear us to our donors.

Finally, thank you for pointing out the need to separate different items
that a lot of people, certainly including me, have been conflating.
Purchasing items for resale, modifying the website, and purchasing
promotional items are all different activities - although the items we sell
certainly are also part of "promotion."  Materials we send out for
promotional purposes must be spot-on and consistently branded.  Items we
sell can be made in a variety of styles, depending on what sells - and, of
course, bring in revenue.  As for the website, it isn't entirely clear to
me what is wrong with our current website and, more importantly, that the
most urgent thing we can do to move public policy in a libertarian
direction by electing Libertarians to public office involves redesigning
our entire website, as opposed to modifying it.  However, I'm not a
marketing expert, so if I'm wrong on that, so be it.

Joshua Katz

Joshua A. Katz
Westbrook CT Planning Commission (L in R seat)

On Sat, Oct 10, 2015 at 4:53 AM, Alicia Mattson <agmattson at gmail.com> wrote:

> The discussion of the current email ballot reminded me that I'm rather
> tardy in addressing the subject matter of the below message.  I don't think
> that the message adequately describes to the LNC what it was that led me
> (while wearing my APRC hat) to point out the policy that required LNC
> notification.
>
> Some of our largest donors are going to be sent a letter which leaves the
> impression that because we adopted a new logo, we need to spend $90,000 for
> a 3-phase rebranding project.
>
> From a donor relations management standpoint, I think this letter might
> leave a bad taste in donors' mouths.  We're broke enough that we send
> urgent-grams saying we can barely pay our bills.  We're heading into a
> presidential election year in which we're going to need a big pile of money
> for ballot access.  I don't think it will appear that we have our
> priorities straight for us to be touting a $90,000 rebranding effort in
> these circumstances.
>
> I agree that having adopted a new logo is going to result in some extra
> expenses related to printing materials and putting the new logo on the
> website.  That is described in this letter as being Phase 1 at a cost of
> $10,000.  It doesn't break down how much of that total is for materials vs.
> the website, but let's just split it and say it's $5,000 for each.
>
> Phase 3 of the proposed rebranding project is a full website redesign,
> with a price tag of $25,000 to $50,000.  Add to that the $5,000 portion of
> Phase 1 for the website, and now we'll be asking these donors for $30,000
> to $55,000 for website changes.
>
> Keep in mind that the IT Committee has been telling us they expect a new
> website would cost us in the $5,000 to $10,000 ballpark, and that doing it
> after the new logo was adopted would allow those changes to be made at the
> same time.
>
> If we tell donors that we need to raise $20,000 for ballot access in State
> X, and donors send us $30,000, and we actually spend the $20,000 we said we
> needed on the project we described, then the excess $10,000 can go into our
> general fund for other uses.  I have no problem with that.  We did what we
> told the donors we would do with the funds, and they gave us more than we
> asked for.  Even if we manage to come in a little under budget and get it
> done for $18,000 instead, that's fine because the $20,000 we asked for was
> a good-faith estimate of what we thought it would take.
>
> However, if we believe that a new website will cost us $10,000, I do not
> think we should tell donors that we need $30,000 to $55,000 for it so that
> any excess collected over whatever we actually spend goes to the general
> fund.  That's not a good-faith estimate.
>
> If the entire three-phrase rebranding project is a single project, the
> $90,000 price tag would represent just under 7% of our entire budgeted
> $1,291,300 revenues.
>
> I agree that in reality, the printed materials and hats/shirts go in
> different budget categories than the website, so that this one
> lump-sum-project pitch might actually be spread across more than one
> category.  But if we just look at the potential $55,000 price tag for the
> website (which does all belong in one budget category), we're pitching to
> donors a project representing just under 4.3% of our entire budgeted
> revenues while the IT Committee has only estimated a $10,000 price tag.
>
> -Alicia
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, Sep 28, 2015 at 7:31 AM, Wes Benedict <wes.benedict at lp.org> wrote:
>
>> This email is primarily a notification email to be sure we're in
>> compliance with our Policy Manual rules.
>>
>> The Policy Manual says:
>>
>> The Executive Director shall notify the LNC of any intention to undertake
>> any project that
>> is estimated, on gross, to cost more than 2.5% of budgeted revenue.
>>
>>
>> I'm sending some fundraising letters that mention branding prominently.
>> What exactly you consider "branding" is subject to interpretation. But as
>> you can imagine, with a new logo and other branding, you change graphic
>> design in snail mail, printed items, fundraising letters, business cards,
>> email headers, brochures, t-shirts, stickers, door hangers, website
>> graphics, and much more.
>>
>> Depending on how well fundraising goes, some of the spending will come
>> out of various categories on the Standard Statement of Operations,
>> depending on the area affected, but could include:
>>
>> 32 Fundraising Costs
>> 33 Membership Fundraising Costs
>> 35 Convention
>> 36 Ballot Access Fundraising Exp
>> 37 Building Fundraising Exp (for example a snail mail for the building
>> using new branded letterhead)
>>
>> 40 Administrative Costs
>> 45 Compensation
>> 50 Affiliate Support
>> 55 Brand Dev / Political Materials
>> 58 Campus Outreach
>> 60 Candidate, Campaign & Initiatives
>> 85 Member Communication
>> 88 Outreach
>>
>> I don't consider new polo shirts, minor website changes, new envelopes,
>> etc., to be a single project. In any case, to be prudent, based on some
>> advice from the APRC, I'm notifying the LNC in case depending on how things
>> go and/or how we treat the bookkeeping we go over 2.5% of budgeted revenue.
>> I have no plans to spend more than 2.5% on a project without approval,
>> unless you consider all of the various minor efforts to be a single
>> project, in which case we'll go over that.
>>
>> We're not building a website without LNC or IT Committee approval and
>> don't have specific plans for a new website yet, just to ease any concerns
>> by the IT Committee in case this email gives the wrong impression.
>>
>> Most of our fundraising letters raise around $10k to $30k. If one of the
>> next ones raises upwards in the range of $45k to $90k, we'd be in a great
>> position to initiate a new website with IT Committee and/or LNC approval. I
>> don't think it would be prudent for me to predict one of our next letters
>> will bring in $90k, but if so, we might feel a bit of pressure to move
>> quickly on some of the bigger IT Project challenges.
>>
>> This email is primarily a notification email. I'm not asking for changes
>> in the budget via this email.
>>
>> However, a separate request, perhaps by the Treasurer, may go out to ask
>> for an increase in the branding budget, so we can add some new brochures to
>> LPStore.org as and/or replenish what is already there.
>>
>> For Functional Allocation of Expenses purposes, I think the time spent on
>> this email should be allocated to Admin, although a case could be made for
>> allocating it to Branding or even Fundraising, since it was a fundraising
>> letter that triggered this.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> --
>> Wes Benedict, Executive Director
>> Libertarian National Committee, Inc.
>> *New address: 1444 Duke St., Alexandria, VA 22314*
>> (202) 333-0008 ext. 232, wes.benedict at lp.org
>> facebook.com/libertarians @LPNational
>> Join the Libertarian Party at: http://lp.org/membership
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Lnc-business mailing list
>> Lnc-business at hq.lp.org
>> http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org
>>
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Lnc-business mailing list
> Lnc-business at hq.lp.org
> http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://hq.lp.org/pipermail/lnc-business/attachments/20151011/da6efa2f/attachment.html>


More information about the Lnc-business mailing list