I share many of these same concerns. I would appreciate hearing from the IT Committee or the Chair as to just how much we anticipate upgrading the website will cost. As I said before, I think it is unavoidable to spend money updating our literature and materials with our new logo. As Mr. Benedict later clarified, it would also be pointless, in my opinion, to refuse to purchase stock to replace items that have sold quickly - if you're selling hotcakes, flour is an expense, but it makes sense to allocate more money to flour if it results in more sales. As the Secretary points out, I don't know where we are on the website redesign. It seems there are two things being discussed: incorporating the new logo, and redesigning the site in its entirety. Certainly the latter will cost more, but if it's going to be done, couldn't the logo incorporation be done along with it? How much will the latter cost? If it costs more than we've allocated for IT, wouldn't it require a vote of the LNC, making it problematic to tell donors it will be done if they donate? We could always return the money, but history doesn't support the likelihood of this, nor is it an approach likely to endear us to our donors. Finally, thank you for pointing out the need to separate different items that a lot of people, certainly including me, have been conflating. Purchasing items for resale, modifying the website, and purchasing promotional items are all different activities - although the items we sell certainly are also part of "promotion." Materials we send out for promotional purposes must be spot-on and consistently branded. Items we sell can be made in a variety of styles, depending on what sells - and, of course, bring in revenue. As for the website, it isn't entirely clear to me what is wrong with our current website and, more importantly, that the most urgent thing we can do to move public policy in a libertarian direction by electing Libertarians to public office involves redesigning our entire website, as opposed to modifying it. However, I'm not a marketing expert, so if I'm wrong on that, so be it. Joshua Katz Joshua A. Katz Westbrook CT Planning Commission (L in R seat) On Sat, Oct 10, 2015 at 4:53 AM, Alicia Mattson <agmattson@gmail.com> wrote:

The discussion of the current email ballot reminded me that I'm rather tardy in addressing the subject matter of the below message. I don't think that the message adequately describes to the LNC what it was that led me (while wearing my APRC hat) to point out the policy that required LNC notification.

Some of our largest donors are going to be sent a letter which leaves the impression that because we adopted a new logo, we need to spend $90,000 for a 3-phase rebranding project.

From a donor relations management standpoint, I think this letter might leave a bad taste in donors' mouths. We're broke enough that we send urgent-grams saying we can barely pay our bills. We're heading into a presidential election year in which we're going to need a big pile of money for ballot access. I don't think it will appear that we have our priorities straight for us to be touting a $90,000 rebranding effort in these circumstances.

I agree that having adopted a new logo is going to result in some extra expenses related to printing materials and putting the new logo on the website. That is described in this letter as being Phase 1 at a cost of $10,000. It doesn't break down how much of that total is for materials vs. the website, but let's just split it and say it's $5,000 for each.

Phase 3 of the proposed rebranding project is a full website redesign, with a price tag of $25,000 to $50,000. Add to that the $5,000 portion of Phase 1 for the website, and now we'll be asking these donors for $30,000 to $55,000 for website changes.

Keep in mind that the IT Committee has been telling us they expect a new website would cost us in the $5,000 to $10,000 ballpark, and that doing it after the new logo was adopted would allow those changes to be made at the same time.

If we tell donors that we need to raise $20,000 for ballot access in State X, and donors send us $30,000, and we actually spend the $20,000 we said we needed on the project we described, then the excess $10,000 can go into our general fund for other uses. I have no problem with that. We did what we told the donors we would do with the funds, and they gave us more than we asked for. Even if we manage to come in a little under budget and get it done for $18,000 instead, that's fine because the $20,000 we asked for was a good-faith estimate of what we thought it would take.

However, if we believe that a new website will cost us $10,000, I do not think we should tell donors that we need $30,000 to $55,000 for it so that any excess collected over whatever we actually spend goes to the general fund. That's not a good-faith estimate.

If the entire three-phrase rebranding project is a single project, the $90,000 price tag would represent just under 7% of our entire budgeted $1,291,300 revenues.

I agree that in reality, the printed materials and hats/shirts go in different budget categories than the website, so that this one lump-sum-project pitch might actually be spread across more than one category. But if we just look at the potential $55,000 price tag for the website (which does all belong in one budget category), we're pitching to donors a project representing just under 4.3% of our entire budgeted revenues while the IT Committee has only estimated a $10,000 price tag.

-Alicia

On Mon, Sep 28, 2015 at 7:31 AM, Wes Benedict <wes.benedict@lp.org> wrote:

...

This email is primarily a notification email to be sure we're in compliance with our Policy Manual rules.

The Policy Manual says:

The Executive Director shall notify the LNC of any intention to undertake any project that is estimated, on gross, to cost more than 2.5% of budgeted revenue.

I'm sending some fundraising letters that mention branding prominently. What exactly you consider "branding" is subject to interpretation. But as you can imagine, with a new logo and other branding, you change graphic design in snail mail, printed items, fundraising letters, business cards, email headers, brochures, t-shirts, stickers, door hangers, website graphics, and much more.

Depending on how well fundraising goes, some of the spending will come out of various categories on the Standard Statement of Operations, depending on the area affected, but could include:

32 Fundraising Costs 33 Membership Fundraising Costs 35 Convention 36 Ballot Access Fundraising Exp 37 Building Fundraising Exp (for example a snail mail for the building using new branded letterhead)

40 Administrative Costs 45 Compensation 50 Affiliate Support 55 Brand Dev / Political Materials 58 Campus Outreach 60 Candidate, Campaign & Initiatives 85 Member Communication 88 Outreach

I don't consider new polo shirts, minor website changes, new envelopes, etc., to be a single project. In any case, to be prudent, based on some advice from the APRC, I'm notifying the LNC in case depending on how things go and/or how we treat the bookkeeping we go over 2.5% of budgeted revenue. I have no plans to spend more than 2.5% on a project without approval, unless you consider all of the various minor efforts to be a single project, in which case we'll go over that.

We're not building a website without LNC or IT Committee approval and don't have specific plans for a new website yet, just to ease any concerns by the IT Committee in case this email gives the wrong impression.

Most of our fundraising letters raise around $10k to $30k. If one of the next ones raises upwards in the range of $45k to $90k, we'd be in a great position to initiate a new website with IT Committee and/or LNC approval. I don't think it would be prudent for me to predict one of our next letters will bring in $90k, but if so, we might feel a bit of pressure to move quickly on some of the bigger IT Project challenges.

This email is primarily a notification email. I'm not asking for changes in the budget via this email.

However, a separate request, perhaps by the Treasurer, may go out to ask for an increase in the branding budget, so we can add some new brochures to LPStore.org as and/or replenish what is already there.

For Functional Allocation of Expenses purposes, I think the time spent on this email should be allocated to Admin, although a case could be made for allocating it to Branding or even Fundraising, since it was a fundraising letter that triggered this.

Thanks, -- Wes Benedict, Executive Director Libertarian National Committee, Inc. *New address: 1444 Duke St., Alexandria, VA 22314* (202) 333-0008 ext. 232, wes.benedict@lp.org facebook.com/libertarians @LPNational Join the Libertarian Party at: http://lp.org/membership

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