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

[Daniel Wiener]

I agree that there are some excellent ideas in the article (
http://ejewishphilanthropy.com/scrapping-synagogue-dues-a-case-study/) which
we may be able to adapt to our own situation.  I don't think that we can
scrap the paid membership model (been there, done that, failed).  But I
could see our supplementing paid memberships better with monthly pledges,
as follows:


   - Determine our overall budget for the coming year.
   - Subtract out the special projects which we will continue to do
   dedicated fundraising requests for (e.g., ballot access, paying down the
   mortgage, legal offense, campus outreach, etc.).  Itemize those categories.
   - Subtract out a conservative estimate of the amount expected from
   annual dues (defined for budgetary purposes as the same number as the
   previous year); and state that the rest needs to be covered by monthly
   pledges.
   - Inform our current monthly pledgers (which make up somewhere between 5
   and 10% of our sustaining membership, I don't recall off-hand the exact
   number) that if they were to all increase their monthly pledge by the same
   "X" percentage, that would be enough for the LP to make its annual "nut"
   and have a sustainable income stream.
   - Calculate that "X" percentage as a dollar amount for each pledger, and
   make the pitch in terms of adding on that monthly incremental rather than
   asking for a new total amount.  (Say it would of course be great if they
   could make the increment even larger, to make up for those who can't afford
   to do so.)  Tell them what it would mean in terms of all the basic
   functions which the national party and the staff must accomplish.
   - Send out a separate pitch to non-pledging members, informing them that
   if we could just increase the number of pledgers by (for example) 50%, and
   if each new pledger were to do so at a level of "Y" dollars per month, that
   would be enough for the LP to make its annual "nut".  Urge them to become
   one of those new 50-percenters to keep the LP working for them.
   - Repeat these pitches periodically throughout the year to both pledgers
   who haven't increase their amounts and to non-pledgers, each time telling
   them how much closer we are to our goal of fully-funding the LP's basic
   operations.  Include a graphic display on our web page and in the emails
   and snail-mails.

Dan Wiener

On Sun, Jul 19, 2015 at 1:37 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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>>
>
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>


-- 
*"In general, we look for a new law by the following process. First, we
guess it (audience laughter), no, don’t laugh, that’s the truth. Then we
compute the consequences of the guess, to see what, if this is right, if
this law we guess is right, to see what it would imply and then we compare
the computation results to nature or we say compare to experiment or
experience, compare it directly with observations to see if it works. If it
disagrees with experiment, it’s WRONG. In that simple statement is the key
to science. It doesn’t make any difference how beautiful your guess is, it
doesn’t matter how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is.
If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. That’s all there is to it.”*
-- Richard Feynman (https://tinyurl.com/lozjjps)
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