To add a little institutional memory for context, I believe this policy was created in response to a similar situation. I don't remember if it was only one of these two examples, or both of them combined but I believe the policy was probably a result of: 1) an affiliate was bundling its own newsletter inside of issues of LPNews sent to addresses in that affiliate. The affiliate used the same print house as LPNews, paid their own costs, but merely had the newsletter inserted into the national one for delivery. AND/OR 2) an affiliate had a joint outreach effort with national to recruit new members from recently registered Libertarian voters in that state -Alicia On Sun, Oct 20, 2019 at 3:07 AM Alicia Mattson <alicia.mattson@lp.org> wrote:
I am not convinced that this is not a special agreement with a state.
My question about who is paying the credit card processing fees was not answered, so I presume that means that the LNC is eating that cost. Let's suppose our discount rate is 4%. If the LNC processes a $50 payment and sends a full $25 to the state, our own credit card processing fees just doubled to 8%. In addition to that amount, which can potentially add up to non-trivial money when you get a lot more states involved, we're also expending our staff time on the state's fundraiser, with all that invested time eating into the $25 - $2 credit card fees = $23 donation that the LNC received. Our staff has to track the numbers, cut checks to each affiliate, etc. Our staff routinely tells us they don't have time to do the things that the LNC has directed them to do, and this is tasking them with an extra arrangement not even agreed to by the LNC.
This free labor and free credit card processing deal is only being offered to FEC filing affiliates, not to all our affiliates. In this instance, it was first offered to only one state right before a critical deadline in which they are competing with other states, and once other states found out that it was available they will have little time to plan and make use of it.
All of this feels like a special agreement to me.
-Alicia
On Wed, Oct 16, 2019 at 1:16 PM Nicholas Sarwark via Lnc-business < lnc-business@hq.lp.org> wrote:
Dear All,
As you are aware, there is a deadline for convention delegate allocation that comes up at the end of this month. Many of your state parties, as well as mine, are doing what they can to sign up additional national members.
A Colorado member contacted me around October 5 with a plan to solicit registered Libertarian voters to encourage them to join both the Colorado and national Libertarian Party at the same time. The challenge he had was not soliciting the potential members, but having a way to make sure that they would also be able to sign the pledge to become sustaining members of the national party and not violate any FEC rules.
Since there is not a legal barrier to transfers between FEC reporting party committees, I suggested he contact Dan Fishman to figure out how to get the Colorado effort a mechanism to process these new memberships and renewals.
The solution he came up allows the LNC to collect a minimum of $50, with the prospective donor being clearly informed that $25 of their donation will be given to the LPCO, which allows them to recoup their marketing expenses. Since the Colorado group is soliciting the extra amount to be sent back to LPCO, there is no cost or loss to the party for sending that amount back, but it's logistically easier for the new member to only have to fill out one web form.
Prior to this request, there was not a way for an FEC filing state to solicit joint donations to the national party. Now there is a mechanism to do so and Mr. Fishman also informs me that the same form can be adapted for any other FEC filing state affiliates. I do not interpret this as a special agreement with with the state affiliate, just an implementation of a single form that will allocate the donors funds as the donor wishes.
The Colorado team took the initiative to recruit new members and have started their work to mail and call people, including a link to the web form that was implemented. I will be instructing Mr. Fishman to activate that link as well as to make a similar form available to any other FEC filing state affiliates who request it.
Yours truly, Nick