via email from George Phillies:
The new LNC draft budget, copies of which have been floating across my transom for some time now, proposes that in the coming year the LNC will
raise 1.14 million dollars
spend $293,000 to raise that 1.14 million dollars
have $845,000 left to spend on programs.
And what is in that program budget?
$334,000 to pay the staff
$406,000 in administrative costs, of which $36,000 for our attorney’s retainer and $104,000 for information technology might involve doing politics, and $26,000 for printing, postage, and telephone could also have that effect. On the other hand, the $140,400 for a corner office in DC class A space does no politics at all.
Oh, activities:
$32,000 for printing the once–monthly newsletter on a quarterly basis
NOTHING for affiliate support
NOTHING for ballot access
NOTHING for brand development
NOTHING for campus outreach
NOTHING for candidate support
NOTHING for litigation
NOTHING for lobbying
NOTHING for media relations
NOTHING for outreach
The notion “volunteer activism is an activity” is apparently so alien that volunteer activism is not even mentioned as an expenditure not being funded.
There will, however, be up to $10,000 for a new phone system and replacement computers.
That was the good part.
Now we come to other part.
That 1.14 million dollars in income or next year includes $100,000 in convention income, the convention being budgeted in advance to lose $20,000.
The $1.14 million also includes $100,000 in fund raising by the national chair and executive director. This line is specified to be new income, something that has not happened in the current year. We’re in the last quarter of the National Chair’s term. Is this number even vaguely credible as an income stream? It appears to have been created to match the income gap.
Then there are the membership plans.
Those of you who have seen the month-by-month membership numbers realize that there’s a lot of fluctuation around the mean. For example, this November membership actually grew by nearly 350. Nonetheless:
We started the year with 16,349 “donors”. That’s actually 15,178 members.
We are predicted to end 2009 with 13,856 “donors”. That’s actually something like 13,300 real members.
The extrapolation for the year 2010, out to the end of December 2010, is 12,044 “donors”, meaning around 11,500 members, the least in a rather long time.
If you keep extrapolating this way, after not so many years we are left with the life members. And what is proposed as a solution for this challenge?
“we do very little new donor acquisition by mail…” “if we merely add new donors through our web presence, we can expect to gain approximately 4,000 new donors through 2010…this is more than offset by attrition…without an investment in growing our donor base, we will continue to lose donors…”
but:
“No amounts are planned here for donor acquisition purposes…”
Let’s skip over the complete lack of interest in *members* and *activists*.
It’s all laid out in black and white.
The Draft LNC budget is a plan for party suicide. It puts the national Libertarian Party in a death spiral, a spiral that accelerates dramatically once party income falls significantly below fixed costs.
If the LNC has a modicum of good sense, it will reject this budget, and suspend for cause the lead officers responsible for writing it. That’s the Treasurer and the Chair.
Don’t count on it.
32 responses so far ↓
1 Robert Capozzi // Dec 5, 2009 at 11:20 am
gp: …suspend for cause the lead officers responsible for writing it. That’s the Treasurer and the Chair.
me: Have there been any LNC Chairs and Treasurer you have supported?
2 Ralph Swanson // Dec 5, 2009 at 11:52 am
Is there a copy of the actual proposal?
Is Mr. Phillies suggesting this is a deliberate attempt to strangle the LP financially from within?
Does LNC have a fundraising/telemarketing staff now?
3 Robert Milnes // Dec 5, 2009 at 12:05 pm
Prof. Phillies & the radicals should take over the LNC.
4 Plas sux // Dec 5, 2009 at 12:18 pm
Why isn’t plas mentioned in the plan?
5 Robert Milnes // Dec 5, 2009 at 12:29 pm
Ralph Swanson @2, yes, that is very possible. The government and the dems & reps have a VITAL vested interest in suppressing the alternative vote & parties. Ron Paul could very well be at least a dupe, if not a government/GOP CI/agent. Also Bob Barr & W.A.R. Some LNC members could also be compromised. However you can be fairly certain that radicals like Mary Ruwart are not. Unless they are being extorted or blackmailed. So the simple solution is for Prof. Phillies & the radicals to take over the LNC.
6 George Phillies // Dec 5, 2009 at 12:30 pm
@2
It is hard to know motives. My position is that the actions are not acceptable for our party’s future and that, if that’s the best the ExComm can do, they should be canned.
@2
There is a copy which I used to write my remarks. Send me your email at phillies@4liberty.net and I will try to send you a copy. Mind you, some of these weird email formats are…uncooperative.
7 All your stone soup are belong to us // Dec 5, 2009 at 2:09 pm
When it comes to competition there are two basic tacks:
1. Build up that which you like.
2. Tear down that which you dislike.
Number 1 requires effort, dedication, faith, and hardest of all it requires that you have the ability to make friends, recruit them, instill confidence and lead them. This is how you make stone soup.
Number 2 is easy… instill fear in the ignorant, raise alarms at shadows and make people doubt their friends and distrust their neighbors. Then you can just call their stone soup your own (or “ours” if you favor a Marxist flavor) when they leave in fright or disgust.
I have trouble supporting GP or his team because I have only ever seen him, CM and RP do a number 2 in their competition’s pool.*
Isn’t that part of politics though?
Yes, it is; much in the same way war and assassination is a part of diplomacy. You need to know where the line is appropriate for internal competition.
GP does us a service by giving us his critical examination of something that we are all responsible for reviewing. He does justice a terrible wrong in calling for retribution so flippantly.
* California ExCom minutes show that Rob Power tried to do positive things while on that committee; but that he was unable to negotiate or work with others. Instead he did a number 2 when he didn’t get his way.
8 Richard Winger // Dec 5, 2009 at 2:43 pm
George, have you abandoned your blog “Daily Liberty”? There hasn’t been a posting since your July “Barr Scam Not Campaign”.
9 Robert Milnes // Dec 5, 2009 at 4:16 pm
I have a suggestion for what it is worth. The LP could purchase a hotel, even a small one, in a good location in/near DC. Make $. Always have office space/meeting space/accomodations. Maybe a couple of other cities too. e.g. St. Louis, Manchester(ne resort in summer), Austin, S.F., Las Vegas/Flagstaff/ Lake Havasu/Phoenix area (sw resort in winter) etc.
10 Robert Milnes // Dec 5, 2009 at 4:18 pm
OOPS! Posted this on wrong thread. It is related to discussions of LP convention & accomodations.
11 George Phillies // Dec 5, 2009 at 4:53 pm
@8
I have people volunteering to post my stuff at Rachel Hawkridge’s Libertarian Discussion Group GoldAmericaGroup http://GoldAmericaGroup.com
which serves the same purpose but has more effective software.
TheDailyLiberty remains open for people to post there.
12 paulie // Dec 5, 2009 at 6:30 pm
Some of the issues Dr. Phillies raises here were addressed at today’s meeting. For now see comments at http://pauliecannoli.wordpress.com/2009/12/05/lnc-nashville-liveblog
Later they will also be in the comments here on the Nashville LNC meeting thread
13 paulie // Dec 5, 2009 at 6:37 pm
http://www.independentpoliticalreport.com/2009/12/lnc-meeting-thread/
14 Robert Capozzi // Dec 5, 2009 at 6:58 pm
stone soup: Isn’t that [(tearing) down that which you dislike] part of politics though?
me: It’d be foolish to say No. OTOH, participating in character assassination is like throwing a bad-karma boomerang. It comes back and hits ya upside the head. I’d hope Ls shun such dysfunctional behavior…our task is big enough as it is!
15 Don Lake .......... John Anderson volunteer 1980 // Dec 5, 2009 at 10:28 pm
All your stone soup are belong to us // Dec 5, 2009 at 2:09 pm:
When it comes to competition there are two basic tacks:
1. Build up that which you like.
2. Tear down that which you dislike.
……….. taking cues from the deform /reform movement are we ???????????
16 Rorschach // Dec 6, 2009 at 1:17 am
Mr. Phillies has proposed a course of action that is undeniably impractical. There have been numerous majority votes on this board over the years that set the Party on this course. To censure only two of the current officers is simultaneously excessive and ineffectual. The complaints he raises, however, have undeniable merit.
The Libertarian Party suffers intractable delusions of grandeur at all levels. It attempts to simulate success by taking a course of action befitting a much larger, more successful organization when it would behoove them to know their station.
New computers and phones? An office suite in the District of Columbia? The Libertarians are not the Republicans. Financially, they are not even the Greens.
This Barry Lyndon approach to success will cost their Party at least a leg, if not an arm as well, and doom it to an obscure death and forgotten existence in America.
It is the responsibility of the board to be honest enough with the nature of the organization for which it is responsible to acknowledge these facts. Without acknowledgment of the problems there will never be solutions. To that end, the only action item in this article with which it is remotely appropriate to agree is to reject this budget. However, I strongly suggest that an alternative be created before the committee calls the vote, lest precious time be wasted.
As an apt aside, it seems that the character of these difficulties is not isolated to the upper echelons of the Party, as indicated by the misuse of the “Stone Soup” analogy. As I recall, the moral of the story is that if you are willing to lie to people more useful than yourself, you can get them to feed you for nothing.
?R
17 Ralph Swanson // Dec 6, 2009 at 5:31 am
@6 Dr. Phillies,
LibIntOrgATMsn.com
Thanks.
18 George Phillies // Dec 6, 2009 at 10:13 am
@16
Actually, an alternative budget has already been proposed; this is the Massachusetts plan budget as covered in the October 2009 Liberty for America magazine, visible at LibertyForAmerica.com.
@17
please check URL; it does not come up here.
19 paulie // Dec 6, 2009 at 10:17 am
17 is email address not URL. substitute @ for AT
20 Holden // Dec 6, 2009 at 8:46 pm
What has the LPMA done as a state affiliate? Is there anything that could be interpreted as a Phillies’ recipe for success that could be applied at the national level, or is Phillies just a disgruntled LP outcast who is bitter over his failure at being elected as the standard-bearer of the Party?
21 Danny S // Dec 6, 2009 at 9:18 pm
What is the alternative? The only alternative this article lines out is reject the budget and punish the perpetrators.
22 George Phillies // Dec 7, 2009 at 10:30 am
If you are steering the ship into the rocks, stopping the engines is a sensible first step.
‘suspend for cause’ is not punishment. It is ‘you are not doing the job’. That is a standard action of a board whose lead officers are not performing adequately. In this case, the difficulty is that ‘adequate’ — do what we did last year — involves a party that slowly dies, the newsletter coming out less and less often, etc., and there is no recognition that the proposal is a proposal for slow death. Of course, you could ask ‘how much money is spent on the things labelled ‘none’ above’ and conclude that LNC Inc is already dead.
If the budget had said ‘here is what we did last year, recycled, and there had been recognition that the outcome was unsatisfactory, you might have a case.
For alternative proposals, read Liberty for America magazine libertyforamerica.com, my 2000 book ‘stand up for liberty!’, and various articles here and at GoldAmericaGroup.com.
23 Robert Capozzi // Dec 7, 2009 at 10:52 am
gp, I’ve not reviewed the budget or your alternatives, but it sounds like you may be extrapolating based on current trends. In my experience, businesses and organizations “tap on their brakes,” cut expenditures during lean times, with the idea that when conditions change, they can step back on the gas. A “slow death” assumes conditions continue as they are, which is generally a poor assumption.
24 Aroundtheblockafewtimes // Dec 7, 2009 at 10:57 am
What would similar office space lease for in Manassas or Warrenton, for example?
25 Michael H. Wilson // Dec 7, 2009 at 11:00 am
Robert where I’m from when things get slow you get out, knock on more doors and get your product in front of more people.
26 robert capozzi // Dec 7, 2009 at 12:08 pm
mhw, yes, also true.
27 Aroundtheblockafewtimes // Dec 7, 2009 at 2:45 pm
Does anyone have membership figures for, say, last twenty years and actual funds raised by National for those years? It seems that the target for 2010 should be # members x average each member has given over that span of time.
Or what the average member gave in non-presidential years. I have a gut feeling the targetted revenue should be a lot higher in 2010, unless the average member has lost his or her zeal to donate to National.
28 George Phillies // Dec 7, 2009 at 4:58 pm
@23 I can assure you that I did not choose the assumptions used in the LNC budget, the officers in some combination did. The assumptions on membership were actually among the more optimistic of the outlined alternatives. ‘current lean times’ was not the general guiding principal. You might find it more useful to read the document.
@25, @23 Either of the approaches you are considering would make more sense than what was proposed, though you could propose that the new income stream from Chair/ED fundraising counts as knocking on more doors.
@27 does someone have…? Yes.
29 Robert Capozzi // Dec 7, 2009 at 5:30 pm
around 25, I’ve not checked recently, but Manassas, Warrenton, Anacostia, or PG County probably all have lease rates half the Watergate’s.
How many years are left on the current lease?
30 mscrib // Dec 7, 2009 at 7:51 pm
@29
That cut office space costs, but try getting potential staff, media, think tankers, let alone interns to work/meet in a non-Arlington/MontCo ‘burb or an economically-depressed, crime-ridden neighborhood in SE DC. If the LNC is dumb enough to move the national office out of NW DC to some PG County dump or somewhere in non-Metro-accessible NOVA, they might as well move the headquarters back to Texas (or North Dakota or Alaska or Uzbekistan, etc.) and SAVE EVEN MORE MONEY on office space.
31 George Phillies // Dec 7, 2009 at 11:28 pm
Moving to a slum is not clever. There are available interns in any reasonable area with a few universities or several other options, e.g., areas with underemployed Libertarian volunteers.
Putting a media office with publicist and front end secretary in DC has nothing to to with putting the back office operations in DC.
As to staff, for what we pay putting the office someplace where staff can afford to live might be an advantage as well as a disadvantage.
In my opinion, Uzbeckistan would not be so sensible a place for our party HQ, but one can find a list of other good choices fairly painlessly. I’m not saying that moving is the right thing to do, but in considering it you would be better off having the alternatives a bit more clear in your thoughts.
Recall that this coming year that office will cost perhaps $140,000.
32 Robert Capozzi // Dec 8, 2009 at 5:27 am
I was kinda kidding. Splitting front/back office ain’t a bad idea, although both would then be tiny. And you lose office synergies/management.
Again, I’d suggest office savings makes sense when the lease is up.
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