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

[Wes Benedict]

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

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