[Lnc-business] website motion

Wed Feb 17 18:38:03 EST 2016

Kevin,

As Robert said, it's a single instance of $10,000 that has been rolled
forward through a couple of budget cycles.

There are at least two angles to look at for your question:
1) Is there budget for it?
2) Do we have cash flow for it?

The cash flow question is probably the bigger hurdle right now.  As noted
when we received the January financials, if it weren't for the once-a-year
bequest payment, we'd have a cash crisis on our hands.

As far as the budget goes, remember that the budget only adopts top-level
budget numbers.  The $10 IT committee request was rolled into a lower-level
detail line of "8190 · Software, Hardware & Other IT".  The $55k Robert was
talking about was the estimated baseline for that category which would
include things like paying for Raiser's Edge, software licenses, etc.  Then
it got bumped another $10k for the IT Committee to propose something.

After those are rolled together, that detail line 8190 gets rolled into an
even bigger category of "40-Administrative Costs" which was budgeted
$270,050 for the year.  That includes LOTS of things like the mortgage
payment, building insurance, IT, etc.  The LNC approved the $270,050 for
the big broad category, regardless of any shuffling between lower-level
categories.  The lower-level categories are just the justification for the
top-level figure.  If we save $5,000 on building insurance, we could spend
it on IT instead and still be on budget for the top-level category.

As long as there's $20k to spare in the Administrative Costs budget, then
the LNC would not need to amend the budget for your request.  The LNC has
indicated it wants to approve specific IT projects, so definitely the LNC
needs to approve the idea, but it MIGHT not have to amend the budget.

Looking at the January 2016 financials, if we assumed the Administrative
Costs were evenly distributed throughout the year, we could have spent
$22,504.17 in that category, but we only actually spent $18,897.30.  We're
below budget-to-date so far.  If I recall correctly, some of the big IT
expenses like the annual Raiser's Edge license occur at the end of the
calendar year, so we have to run under-budget early on to have room left
for that payment at the end.

It's a projection game of whether we think we'll have $20k of room in that
budget by the end of the year.  If we agree to spend it now on this project
and then find ourselves running out of the budget at the end of the year,
then staff has to find somewhere else to save money on admin or the LNC has
to increase the budget.

Hope that made sense...

-Alicia

On Wed, Feb 17, 2016 at 9:40 AM, Kevin Ludlow <ludlow at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Alicia,
>
> I don't have the spreadsheet handy, but does that mean there is a budget
> of $10k or a budget of $20k ($10k + a carryover of $10k)?
>
> If you don't have it either, I can try to dig it up.
>
> Thanks much.
> Kevin
>
> On Tue, Feb 16, 2016 at 8:03 PM, Alicia Mattson <agmattson at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Each of the 2015 and 2016 budget spreadsheets indicated they included
>> $10k of carry-over funds for the IT Committee.  See footnote (t) on the
>> detail page of those spreadsheets.
>>
>> -Alicia
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Feb 16, 2016 at 5:31 PM, Kevin Ludlow <ludlow at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Thanks for that response, Mr. Katz.  I hope other members of the body
>>> weigh in here.
>>>
>>> While we're on the topic, it is my understanding that the IT Committee
>>> was given a budget of $25,000 at the very first IT committee meeting.  They
>>> had one main goal: fix the website.
>>>
>>> We are now close to two years in and still have nothing to show for it.
>>>
>>> I wanted to point that out because unless I'm incorrect about that
>>> number, we don't even have to rearrange the budget to do it.  We just have
>>> spend what was allocated to make it happen.
>>>
>>> I am happy to use NationBuilder BTW.  It would be even cheaper at this
>>> point.  I can easily outsource the design of the website based on specific
>>> criteria.  I can get us back visual comps.  We can pick one.  They can beef
>>> it up.  NationBuilder can implement it.  For $25,000 I would expect that
>>> possibly almost overnight!  ...not really, but in the "Good, fast, cheap -
>>> pick two" world, $25,000 gets you a hell of a lot of GOOD and FAST when
>>> you're just need to design the site and not develop it.
>>>
>>> Kevin Ludlow
>>> Region 7
>>> 512-773-3968
>>>
>>> On Tue, Feb 16, 2016 at 4:13 PM, Joshua Katz <planning4liberty at gmail.com
>>> > wrote:
>>>
>>>> I'll address Mr. Ludlow's open question, in the course of doing so, I
>>>> think I will address some of Mr. Riemer's points.
>>>>
>>>> As I said before, I don't know if our website is good or bad, and if
>>>> it's bad, I don't know why.  That doesn't matter, though, since I am not in
>>>> either of the two groups that would be reliable on this question:  web
>>>> developers and the target market.  Mr. Ludlow is in one of those groups, so
>>>> I believe him on that.
>>>>
>>>> I don't need to know what, precisely, is wrong with our website.  No
>>>> one elected me here because of my capacity for being impressed by
>>>> websites.  I do notice a few things - our home page is covered in text,
>>>> while Democrats.org is not, for instance.  I also happen to know that
>>>> companies don't just come up with websites that say what they want to say.
>>>> They think carefully about who their messaging is targeting, and then pay
>>>> people to come up with sites that will speak to those people.  Do we have a
>>>> solid sense of our target market?  If not, I am not sure a web developer
>>>> can design something to do what we want.  I think we do, though, and I
>>>> think we could communicate our needs to a web developer, who knows how to
>>>> make a page accomplish the things we want to accomplish.
>>>>
>>>> I have no idea what makes one page appeal to one group and a different
>>>> page to another.  I see that the home page of Democrats.org displays very
>>>> brief "I'm a Democrat because..." statements, and asks users why they are
>>>> Democrats (getting customers to tell you how to sell to them seems useful).
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> That seems a pretty apt reason why this board shouldn't be asking
>>>> questions like "what's wrong with it?  what would you have it do instead?"
>>>>  If a programmer comes to Microsoft's board and wants funding to update
>>>> some program, the board doesn't try to second-guess that programmer, using
>>>> whatever coding skills they picked up at a weekend class at their local
>>>> public library.  They believe the programmer, then decide if the
>>>> expenditure to do the update fits into their strategic plans.  They
>>>> certainly don't say "we're not going to fund that, but I went to a
>>>> programming forum and found this bit of code...stick that into your program
>>>> instead and see if that works."  Instead, I'd suggest we do what we were
>>>> elected to do, and not things we weren't elected to do.
>>>>
>>>> Why do it now and not next budget year?  Well, that depends.  If we
>>>> believe that a better website would generate more votes, better candidates,
>>>> and more elected officials, what's the point of waiting?  If we have some
>>>> reason that more members, more donors, and more elected officials now would
>>>> be a bad thing, then yes, I agree, we shouldn't improve our largest
>>>> marketing presence now.  If not, then I don't see why we'd agree it needs
>>>> to be done, then wait.
>>>>
>>>> Will I support this proposal?  Most likely, but I'll want to know first
>>>> what's going on with the IT committee, which took on this project.  I don't
>>>> want bids coming in for two different overhauls, and I want to know where
>>>> they are in the process.  Certainly, the length of time we've been talking
>>>> about this is much longer than Mr. Ludlow tells us the entire project
>>>> usually takes, so I'm also curious why it isn't done already (and why we,
>>>> the LNC, don't give our committees more power to act on our behalf, rather
>>>> than making reports at quarterly meetings on which the LNC may or may not
>>>> act).
>>>>
>>>> So that's where I stand on this; pending seeing the actual motion and
>>>> hearing the IT committee report.
>>>>
>>>> Joshua Katz
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Joshua A. Katz
>>>> Westbrook CT Planning Commission (L in R seat)
>>>>
>>>> On Tue, Feb 16, 2016 at 1:55 AM, Kevin Ludlow <ludlow at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> All:
>>>>>
>>>>> As I mentioned last week when adding to the agenda, I intend to pursue
>>>>> $20,000 from the budget and the blessing to spend that money on a 3rd party
>>>>> website development company for lp.org.  I have several highly
>>>>> qualified companies that I work with.  I've no intention of pursuing my own
>>>>> software company as a vendor.
>>>>>
>>>>> I will formalize the motion before Saturday.
>>>>>
>>>>> I was hoping to get an idea on who would be willing to support this
>>>>> motion.  I would note that this has been talked about for 2 years.  The
>>>>> website is horrible.  I am professionally qualified to lead this effort.  I
>>>>> am highly confident we can have the whole thing done in 6 weeks time (from
>>>>> whenever we get going).
>>>>>
>>>>> If there is a discussion to be had, please start that discussion here
>>>>> so we needn't waste time on the floor answering questions that could easily
>>>>> be answered on via email.
>>>>>
>>>>> I really hope this group is interested in pursuing this.  Please
>>>>> consider that we spend over twice as much annually sending printed pieces
>>>>> of paper as I am requesting for a the one-time development cost of what
>>>>> should be our single most valuable tool for marketing, branding, and
>>>>> general outreach.
>>>>>
>>>>> Thank you.
>>>>> Kevin Ludlow
>>>>> Region 7 Rep
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> ========================================================
>>>>> Kevin Ludlow
>>>>> 512-773-3968
>>>>> http://www.kevinludlow.com
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Lnc-business mailing list
>>>>> Lnc-business at hq.lp.org
>>>>> http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
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>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> ========================================================
>>> Kevin Ludlow
>>> 512-773-3968
>>> http://www.kevinludlow.com
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>> http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org
>>>
>>>
>>
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>>
>
>
> --
> ========================================================
> Kevin Ludlow
> 512-773-3968
> http://www.kevinludlow.com
>
>
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>
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