[LPC County Officers] Membership Acquisition and Renewal Agreement

Activists List
1

This really bothers me, because as I understand it the LP will
still be making UMP payments to the LPC through March, and LP dues
only go to zero in January; whereas according to this message and
the attached letter, the LPC is raising dues immediately as of
October 1, and is making the following claims, which I believe to
be false:

"The national Libertarian Party *has ended* its paid membership
program and *as of the end of September* will no longer share dues
with the state parties. They will still accept donations and
subscriptions to their newsletter, but any money sent to the
national party will not be shared with your state and local
parties." (from the attached letter; emphasis mine)

Isn't this just blatantly fraudulent? Or does someone else here
understand what's going on better than I do?

Justin

Marcy Berry wrote:

Forwarding announcement from Aaron Starr

Marcy

From: Aaron Starr<mailto:starrcpa@pacbell.net>
To: countyofficers@ca.lp.org<mailto:countyofficers@ca.lp.org>
Sent: Tuesday, August 30, 2005 11:14 PM
Subject: [LPC County Officers] Membership Acquisition and
Renewal Agreement

Dear County Officer,

As you probably already know, the Libertarian National Committee
is ending the Unified Membership Plan as of the end of
September. That means the national party will no longer engage
in membership acquisition (which they haven't done seriously
since 2000) nor will they engage in membership retention (which
they have been doing well to date).

Since our LPC bylaws require that 60% of dues collected be
passed to the county party, the LPC cannot afford to cover 100%
of the costs of membership acquisition and renewal on 40% of the
revenue. Therefore we have a voluntary program of working
together with the county parties to acquire new members and
renew lapsing members.

The gist of the program is that the state and county parties
split the costs 50/50, the dues are split 60/40, the state party
does most of the work, and the state party bears all of the risk
if a mailing flops. The full text of the agreement is attached.

Of course, this program is voluntary. You are free to develop
your own renewal and acquisition program independent of the
state party. However, county parties so choosing are still
required by the bylaws to share up to 40% of the dues with the
LPC, even while bearing 100% of the costs.

The Contra Costa, Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego, Santa Clara,
and Ventura county parties have already agreed. That is already
the critical mass needed to proceed.

Direct mail experts tell me that we are at particular risk right
now because most of our members have always written their dues
checks to the national party. It's not going to be easy to
convince them to start giving to us. I believe that if we're
diligent, many of those folks will start giving to us, but we
must also be prepared for the likelihood that a large number
will never convert into California party donors. If we do
nothing, we will be a tiny fraction of our current size in less
than a year.

We have a membership renewal letter almost ready to go (draft
attached) that is time-critical. If you would like your county's
members to be included in this mailing, which is scheduled for
early next week, please have the county chair sign the attached
agreement and fax it to both the LPC office at 818-782-8488 and
my home at 805-583-3337 by noon Sunday, September 4th.

If you choose to join the program at a later time, we'll include
your county in future mailings.

Toward liberty,

Aaron Starr
Chairman
Libertarian Party of California
(805) 583-3308 Home
(805) 404-8693 Mobile

_______________________________________________
Countyofficers mailing list
Countyofficers@ca.lp.org
http://ca.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/countyofficers_ca.lp.org

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