[Lnc-business] Follow Up Reading For Your Flights Home

Mon Jul 20 02:15:27 EDT 2015

Thank you for the article.  I've had some time now to think about the
membership-model, and have some additional information from this reading,
and so I have some more comments on the topic.

First, a general belief:  things change.  Things don't change very fast
most of the time.  Most "the world has changed" claims end up being wrong,
but some are vast understatements.  The hard part, of course, is figuring
out which is which.

Now a specific suggestion:  Basing too much on stereotypes about the
skinny-jeans and skinny-tie wearing, clunky glasses, expensive sliders and
craft cocktails in mason jars generation (that was purposefully ironic, by
the way) is, in my opinion, a mistake.  Why?  Because people grow up.  It
is easy to mistakenly think the world has changed based on what is trendy
among young people.

What I think will be permanent is the sharing/homebrew economy and the
disruption is it bringing, not only economically but also socially -
disruption in a good sense, that is, for everyone except entrenched
interests.  The change won't, in my opinion, be as huge as one might think
- I don't think it's quite accurate to say "the sharing economy will win
over entrenched interests" and to expect that a time will come when TLCs
will stop fighting Uber, restaurants will stop fighting food trucks, etc.
I also don't think the sharing economy will lose.  There will be a detante,
probably - homebrewing will go further than it did in the past, but not as
far as I think it should.  Such is life.

Membership models are tied into this fight.  The article doesn't mention
it, but what is flourishing far more than any synagogue model is the
chavura model - something closer to a co-op than a retail religious
experience.  I attend a synagogue that does not charge dues, by the way.
It is not flourishing.  The difference, I think, between this article and a
chavura is that the chavura has truly moved away from the membership model,
while this synagogue has just moved away from dues but still has the same
notion of membership.

Now, to the LP:  If we were a religious organization, membership and
attendance would be the entirety of our goals.  Our goal, though, is to
elect candidates to public office in order to move public policy in a
libertarian direction.  We want to have members as a means to that goal.  I
agree that a model of get lots of members, have them pay dues, have a fixed
income stream before fundraising is likely not optimal.  People are bowling
alone.  If they weren't, they probably wouldn't want to go bowling with a
bunch of libertarians anyway - and if they did, they'd find them on
Facebook or Meetup.  I don't think a chavura model would work for us either
- precisely because of what we are.  We're supposed to provide a service,
but to the public at large - that service is freedom.  We can only provide
it by convincing the public that they should want it, but we can't charge
for it.  Our constituency is that portion of the public we've convinced to
want that service.  Our membership is a subset of that.  But you don't need
to be a member to campaign, run for office (except President, or as
established by an affiliate), volunteer, vote, register L - that is, almost
all of our political activities, which are the core of what a party does.

So what do I want to maintain a membership model for?  Internal purposes -
serving in leadership roles and so on.  We want our members to be the pool
from which that is drawn.  For the real politics, though, we cannot have a
model that says "oh, you like our ideas?  Come to our boring business
meeting, pay us $25, and then...stuff."  We cannot charge for agreeing with
us.

How, then, does one fund our activity?  How does one get a fever down?  By
taking Tylenol (that is, making phone calls), and by curing the infection
(that is, by inspiring people to love this party and what it does so much
that they can't help but take out their checkbooks.)  I made some
suggestions today regarding that, including increasing contact with the DC
press corps and Congressional staffers.  We are a clearinghouse for
connecting in a horizontal way, and we are the national presence for our
affiliates and candidates.  The LPCT is in an odd position trying to take a
stand on foreign policy - reporters don't want to talk to us about it,
because, well, we're a state party.  One of the topics taught at LPEX was
the importance of the perception of bigness, and the reassurance given when
a person doesn't feel like joining us is jumping off a cliff, but joining a
large group.  "Please speak to our national office about that" is bigness.
Not having to clarify our views on larger issues because national is
messaging them effectively, and instead focusing my campaign on my key
issues, is bigness, and it works.  Being perceived as an important part of
the political process gives reassurance.  I am happy to work with staff to
figure out if what I suggested will work, and to travel to the District to
make it happen as often as I can.

I'm not married to that particular way of creating value (well, I think
it's a really good idea, but I'm biased.)  I am married to the idea that
our focus should be creating value for affiliates in the ways unique to a
national organization.  Doing fundraising is like saying that my type is a
woman who will have me - yes, that's necessary, but it's not really all
that descriptive.  We have to ask, but our bigger problem is being
valuable.  "We ran out of money, let's go ask for more" is not a long-term
strategy - it's how governments operate.

I'd add that we also need to demonstrate to our donors that we are good
stewards of their resources.  It is a fact about human beings that it is
easier to spend other people's money than one's own, and there's no reason
to think this wouldn't impact us.  I was going to say "like it impacts
politicians" except, hey, we are politicians.

Those are, of course, just my opinions.  I am not claiming they're
definitive - I am hoping to spark discussion.  We all bring different life
experiences - I'm relying here on my experience reinventing a math
department in a school with declining enrollment and revenue, and on my
very different experience building an EMS organization from small to
adequate.  I've seen that it grew faster after I left, though, so that's a
worthy disclaimer.

I'd also compare the opinion I'm laying out here to what campaigning is
like.  Trying to get our supporters to join and pay dues is like expecting
everyone who supports you to volunteer on your campaign.  If the number of
volunteers equals the number of votes, you're in trouble.  You also get
votes (most of them) from non-libertarians who never will be libertarians,
but who think you're the best in the race.  We often give off the
impression of only wanting supporters who identify as libertarians (which
we then treat as a binary.)  In any case, the basis of a campaign, in my
opinion, is turning ideology and philosophy into an actual program of
governance.  Most of that program - the part you don't talk about as much,
but show in the way you carry yourself and act - has nothing to do with
your ideas.  A lot of the art of governance is ideology-independent.  On
that, you need to convince voters you're competent - just like we need to
show we are good stewards.  Then there's the ideology-driven part, which is
what you actually campaign on.  It only works, though, if you can turn it
into actionable items.  I'm not willing to squeeze that into as small a box
as others might be, but the idea here, in my mind, is having simple,
concrete actions, which make the community better off in some way, and
which, taken together, move your ideology forward.  Our equivalent is
electing officials - the art of governance is determining in what ways we
can do so - just like, as a candidate, I want to advance freedom, but need
to also figure out how I'd do that as an X by looking at the powers that X
has, and what X can actually do in practice.  So what specific tools do we
have to use towards the goal of electing officials, that are unique to us
and not available to affiliates, and what ability do we have to use them in
practice - considering money costs, the fundraising impact of using them
successfully, and all other constraints and opportunities?  I think that's
the starting point if we want a model other than finding people to give us
$25.

I apologize for the length, and, again, that's all just my opinion.  If I
knew for sure, I'd be making a heck of a lot more money as a consultant
than I do as a teacher.

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

On Sun, Jul 19, 2015 at 4:37 PM, Nicholas Sarwark <chair at lp.org> wrote:

> Thank you for sharing that very insightful article.  There are some very
> good ideas there that we may want to try.
>
> -Nick
>
> On Sun, Jul 19, 2015 at 7:28 AM, Brett Bittner <brett at brettbittner.com>
> wrote:
>
>> To follow up on my comments regarding the membership model today, please
>> take a look at this case study regarding a "radical" idea to change how we
>> view membership in the Party:
>>
>> http://ejewishphilanthropy.com/scrapping-synagogue-dues-a-case-study/
>>
>> **This message sent from my phone. Please excuse any typos.
>>
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