| LPHQ Conference New National Support For State Parties by Mike Hihn In early March, LP national staff hosted ''Success 97,'' the first annual joint planning conference with state affiliates. Representatives from each state party attended. The meetings were productive and encouraging, and worth sharing with you here. The Browne campaign created explosive growth in both party membership and funding. That funding now supports a greatly expanded headquarters staff, which now provides new and valuable support for state affiliates, with more to come. To illustrate, consider the help and support a McDonald's franchise gets from its larger franchiser, McDonald's Inc. Our state parties have been like Mom and Pop hamburger stands, each competing on its own against established giants like McDonald's and Burger King. LPHQ can now assume much of our ''administrivia,'' and help professionalize our local efforts, thus freeing local time and dollars for our real mission, which is, as adopted by the LP National Committee in 1994: ''Move public policy in a libertarian direction, by building a political party which elects Libertarians to public office.'' ''Missions, Goals and Milestones'' are the jargon of strategic planning. Skipping the jargon, strategic planning starts with, ''Pick a number and make it happen.'' For long-term goals, ''making it happen'' requires working backwards to define the smaller steps along the way. Without the smaller steps, long-term goals can seem impossible to achieve. For example, LPHQ assumes we need 400,000 dues-paying members to achieve parity with the major parties. The number seems realistic. But if that's our own only goal, it may also be reasonable to give up and walk away. Many LPers have done exactly that, and argue we can never succeed as a political party. That's why we need strategic planning. How do we get from here to there? What small steps must we take along the way? What milestones can track our progress? Two major milestones are now assumed, on the way to parity and 400,000 members. We need Perot-style media coverage, which probably requires 200,000 members. To hit 200,000, we first need a large donor base of non-members, which requires a higher level of credibility, which in turn may require 100,000 members. Before that can happen, we see an immediate obstacle. Libertarian ideas are gaining wide acceptance, but the entire movement has only 40,000 members--a number obtained by combining membership lists from every libertarian organization, then purging duplicates. That says we must develop appeal to people outside the movement, for both dollars and votes, or we won't even reach the first milestone. Who are those people, and how do we appeal to them? LPHQ fund-raisers are paying for detailed demographic studies. The results will provide the sophisticated database and mailing list resources now available to the major parties. It's not enough to set goals, both long-term and intermediate. We also need the tools to achieve them. A new Unified Membership Plan is the first step toward professionalizing our party, both nationally and locally.
At 800 members, we'll instantly become the 6th largest state party in the country--in both absolute numbers and as a percentage of population. That means more dollars and--perhaps even better--new people and fresh ideas. But even UMP is only part of a larger plan.There are other advantages to merging our membership and databases.
A more immediate benefit: LPHQ can now do all the direct-mail follow-ups to prospect lists provided by state parties. Some states are abandoning their own 800 numbers and info kits. LPHQ now converts 20% of prospects to members within 18 months, and is working to improve that ratio. For example, they now do recruiting mailings to everyone who scores a minimum 70/70 at Nolan Booths, but these prospects have the very worst conversion rate. Eventually, we'll know what minimum score justifies the expense of repeat mailings--along with tools to make all our mailings more cost effective.
Ron Crickenberger, former national Campaigns Chair, was recently hired as Political Director. His projects are what most readers of this will find the most helpful: significantly expand LP training tapes and manuals, including campaign manuals for specific offices. (Be patient, Ron is still in the process of moving to DC.) What I got from the conference, personally, is that we're a lot less alone in the battles that lie ahead. I have a better grasp of the steps required for liberty to triumph, which I've tried to share with you here. Putting goals on paper is easy. Committing to those goals is something else. I was pleased that many of our comments got the same response, ''How will that elect more Libertarians?'' That's the discipline we need. Mike Hihn is LPWS Campaigns and Publicity Chair
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Unified Membership Plan. (UMP).
Last month I briefly noted that LPWS membership will
increase from 300 to 800 within a year. The LPWS has
approximately 300 members. The national party has
approximately 800 members in our state. Under UMP, state
and national memberships and databases will be merged.
LPHQ will do all our billing and renewals. We'll receive
monthly checks for our state share of the combined $25
membership, plus a small percentage of LPHQ fundraising
in Washington state.
