| Officer Reports
Chair
Rachel Hawkridge is experiencing health problems, and is not able to perform some of her duties as our Regional Representative, in particular running the Libertarian State Leadership Alliance (LSLA) conference she was organizing in February. The conference has been canceled. David wishes Rachel, on behalf of this Committee, the best of luck and a speedy recovery. David did speak with Vicky Kirkland, our regional alternate from Florida, who will be taking over Rachel's responsibilities at the next LNC meeting.
An LSLA meeting, to take the place of the February meeting, has been scheduled for August 19th, in Columbus, Ohio. This will be just prior to the LNC's meeting. David plans on attending the LSLA meeting in August.
The attendance for the February meeting appeared to be low, with some state chairs stating they weren't going to make the trip. But according to an impromptu vote on the chairs mailing list, a response was received from over half the chairs. So interest in the August meeting seems good. If anyone else is interested in attending this meeting, please let David know.
David did write an article for the January newsletter, but did not make the publication deadline. The article was about the Arizona shootings and may still be usable. David stresses that we need people to contribute articles for the newsletter, so that people are more inclined to pick it up and read it.
As of last month, we appeared to be on track for the 12 in 2012 initiative, and during the Officer Reports we'll take note about whether we remain on track.
Treasurer
George was contacted by Alex Massa from Springfield (actually South Hadley) who will be running for State Rep.
David commented that with the addition of Alex, we're well on our way to 12 candidates in 2012.
Since the last meeting, George spent $22.10 to print the newsletter.
George spent $126 on the Boston Pride registration. We still need to spend another $50 on the insurance required for that event.
A financial report covering last year was circulated.
According to the aforementioned financial report: since 2007 our income has more than doubled. Our state income is larger than federal. Income and outgo are roughly in balance. We have about $8,000 on hand between State and Federal accounts. The State PAC spent $1,500 supporting 3 candidates, $1,800 for stamps, printing, and envelopes, mainly for fundraising, and about $290 for administration. Our administrative costs include Meetups, PO Box, DonorTownSquare, Soapblox, Bluehost renewal (divided between state and federal). We spent $380 to go to the Boston Pride event. From the Federal PAC, we spent $970 on printing and mailing, half of that was the newsletter. We also spent $1,050 on candidate support, which was Joe and Bob. We spent $790 on outreach, tablecloths, folding machine, and administrative expenses. There were fees to DonorTownSquare for each credit card donation. We spent $500 on the state convention, which was self funded from registration fees. The newsletter costs about $8.40 per year per member to print and mail. The $10 surcharge on dues with paper mail letters seems to cover things. The state convention seems to be in good shape.
David asked how fundraising is going. The mail campaign from a month ago brought in $2,325. So the mailing more than paid for itself. The $2,325 counts towards our goal of $20,000 by 2012 elections. George also has a list of donors to Carla Howell's tax cut, as well as other referendum efforts. David suggested the fundraising working group take this offline.
Membership Secretary
We have 115 members, same as last month.
David suggested the membership working group get together and brainstorm how we can get more members.
Bill Discipio is calling former members, and has called about 60 so far. Of the people he reaches, about half rejoin. The rest (leaving message) have been unproductive.
Since it's evident that personal contact is important, we should focus more on that. Another topic for the membership working group.
Membership Renewals
Dick reminded us that he'll be in Florida most of February.
Dick needs a list of who to send letters to. George said he would supply that.
Editor
The newsletter is printed and awaits collation after the meeting. This will be a 10 page issue because it includes a FAQ about LPMass. George sent an email copy of the newsletter to all current National Party members that we have an email address for, and to all state chairs. The email list from National seems to be more up to date than the last time this was done.
Bob Clark asked if we need to consider increasing the surcharge for paper newsletters. George said: not in the foreseeable future.
Political Facilitator
Jon said Alex Massa and himself are running for office.
Jon asked if he, being a candidate for 2011, will be counted towards our 2012 goal.
There is also Brian from Lynn running for City Council in 2011, and considering State Rep in 2012.
Jon said he new a total of 6 people that he'd talked to that we may count as candidates. Towards the goal of 12 in 2012, that's a very good start.
David asked if any of the candidates had prior campaign experience, Jon listed 4 (who are Committee members).
Alwin asked if Brian had been in contact with the Mayor in Lynn, and Jon said yes.
Jon asked if we wanted to pursue the fundraising efforts he suggested. David said the working group needs to form a proposal, and the Committee will discuss it.
Kristin mentioned she had been in touch with Alex Massa, and he sounds ready to get going.
Jon's opponent for planning board has dropped out of the race.
Outreach
Alwin checked the list of county fairs. They only had the 2010 list, so we don't have dates for 2011. From that we may pick one(s) to get a table at.
One coin show has a $10, Sunday only special. It would be worth it to try to get a table there.
Gun shows for 2011 are booked, and the majority are run by the organization that's already turned us down. The two biggest in NH - Concord and Manchester - are fully booked. So our best bet may be to just show up and hand out information to people as they go in.
Kristin asked if we could reserve space for gun shows in 2012. Alwin said the biggest problem with Massachusetts gun shows is we're not allowed by the organizer, Mid-Hudson Productions.
On the effort of contacting registered Libertarians in person, Alwin and Jon have been gathering lists from towns. To go door to door, it was suggested that we have a script. So Alwin brought and distributed an initial draft. He suggested a couple people pick a town and go door to door. A town like Charlton or Oxford, with about 20 registered Libertarians, could be covered in a day. The question is: do we have enough people that can/will do this? David suggested delegating this to volunteers, and if that's not enough, committee members can do it. Committee members can do trial runs, then maybe pass it on to members. David asked for committee volunteers to get it started, Alwin, Dick, Bob Clark volunteered. Alwin asked what we should hand out. Suggestions: tri-fold, membership application, schedule of events. Since it will be at least March before we need this, the working group should get together and develop this.
We should also consider flea markets. You can just show up and pay your money. The working group should investigate, and present a proposal to the committee.
Recording Secretary
The last two sets of minutes have been distributed in .doc format. Those will be exported to .pdf and placed online.
Technology
Bob Clark said over the next week or so he will put a lot of time into the web site. He reminded everyone that they may be contacted asking for content.
Bob Clark said he still plans on contacting people who helped on his campaign, asking them to join LAMA, but is putting that off until we have an online, easy-as-possible process in place.
David reminded everyone that we do have a web site and a forum, and asked that we utilize it. He said he is on it every day, making sure if anyone is volunteering for work, that they are given something to do. If anyone has problems with the forum, please see Bob Clark.
Alwin and Dick are having problems logging into the forum. Bob Clark said he would help with that.
George asked if the web content is going to be worked on, and Bob Clark said yes, as time permits.
David asked if time sensitive items are going to be put on the web site, like meeting announcements, events, etc. Bob said yes. Currently the lp.org blog is the only updating portion of the site.
George asked if GoldMassGroup could be fed to the web site. Bob Clark guessed that it could be. Joe confirmed that the Joomla based site is able to do that, just find out the feed URL and plug it in.
David sees the lpmass.org web site as an information portal of state libertarian happenings. So the more information like that we can get online, the better.
George discovered that you can submit articles to GoldMassGroup with a future date. So he submitted all newsletter articles at the same time, and they are showing up periodically.
Joe pointed out that on the GoldMassGroup is an RSS feed link. Just copy it into the lpmass.org web site and it'll display it.
George pointed out that he has a number of accounts requiring username and password, and asked who should have these in case George is unavailable. There are 2 DonorTownSquare accounts, FEC and OCPF, GoldMassGroup, GoDaddy who has all our domains. Bob Clark suggested Chair, Treasurer, and Webmaster.
David asked about how we're doing on social media. George said we have Facebook pages for Young Libertarians of Massachusetts, and LAMA. We are running 8 different ads on Facebook. The cost is $0.07 per thousand impressions. We've had about 380,000 impressions, which have generated about 40 clicks. The YLM ads are targeting Facebook users from 18-30 years old. There are 2 million of them in Massachusetts. The other ads target anyone from Massachusetts, which there are 3.5 million of. David quickly calculated that we've spent about $26 on each set of ads, and have gotten our name in front of 380,000 (minus repeats) visitors.
Bob Underwood mentioned that his old web sites still get lots of traffic. Joe asked if those are hits or real people. Bob said hits.
George said there are statistics available from our hosting service, that say they can tell the difference between people and robots. George suggested presenting those statistics each month.
George asked for more suggestions for Facebook ads.
Joe said we've increased the volume of individuals coming to the website by about 25%, with a total of 292 visits. The average time spent on the site has also gone up, and 58% of the traffic is visitors that are new from the previous month.
Most of the traffic is from Massachusetts. The full traffic report was emailed out to the committee this morning. Traffic sources are still largely Google, lp.org, and GoldAmericaGroup.
David asked if anyone has posted links to our web site from other places, like Independent Political Report, blogs, etc. George said Lee Wrights has links on his presidential web site to state party sites.
George said we need an archivist that will take these reports, 3 hole punch them, and put them into binders. Bob Clark volunteered for this. This should include handouts, etc.
Press Outreach
Bob Underwood is gathering a list of web sites that he can post articles on, and a list of newspapers to write letters to. Spanish newspapers have mixed us up with the Tea Party, so Bob has written letters to them pointing out that we are separate. The editor of El Pueblo Latino wrote back thanking him for the clarification.
David mentioned that we still have an invitation to do a Public Service Announcement for Channel 3, Medford, which Joe confirmed. If anyone has ideas for the content of that, please contact Joe or David.
George said he had a list of editors that he would send to Bob Underwood.
Bob Underwood has been exchanging emails with Alex Massa, and said he wasn't sure in which district he would run, because he lives close to current district borders. He lives in South Hadley, and he is going to Western New England College. It would be nice to have two Libertarians running in districts close to one another, and may get more publicity as a result.
Meeting adjourns for a break at 3:49.
Meeting resumes at 4:03.
New Business
George asked that the state convention be added to New Business. Accepted.
Budget
For federal, current allocations of money coming in are:
10% Administrative
10% Volunteer support
20% Renewals and recruitment
20% Candidate support
40% Fundraising, outreach, advertising, candidate recruitment
Except for a note at the bottom, George does not recommend changes to these.
Of the $3,935 in the account, George proposes:
$400 to volunteer support, and charging Meetup to that account
$100 to administrative
$1,000 to Fundraising, etc.
$585 to Candidate support
$300 to Renewals and recruitment
George proposes capping administrative at $400 for state and federal. Any money that exceeds this, should be diverted to candidate support.
The state convention comes out of the federal account, and has been self funding for the last few years.
Speaking of the state convention, one of the proposed speakers, Howard Katz, who was the Libertarian candidate for US Senate in Massachusetts, died in December.
This year, we will be choosing our delegates to the national convention, and therefore we should be able to get Libertarian presidential candidates to speak for free. George suggests that we invite candidates that who 1) have filed with the FEC, 2) are raising identifiable sums of money, 3) have a campaign organization that is more than one person, 4) have a substantial record of involvement with the national party.
David asked if we have more leftover money in some accounts than others, wouldn't it be appropriate to adjust the allocation of incoming money. George replied that it's more a case that we need to do the things we allocated money for and failed to do.
If there appears to be a lack of support for presidential ballot access, we need to decide what to do about it. George received some rough quotes from Freedom Petition Management, which varied greatly based on how much of the work we want them to do. George suggested letting them do all the work because we don't appear to have an alternative.
For the state account, there is currently about $4,400 in it. Of the cash on hand, George proposes sending:
$200 to administrative
$400 to volunteer support
$900 to candidate support
$575 to public communication
And again the administrative account should be capped at $400 per year, with the excess going to candidate support.
Bob Underwood asked if the State Rep candidates on the committee can vote on the state budget. George said no, they must be excluded. George moved to split the voting between the two accounts. Dick seconded the motion, and it passed unanimously.
Bob Clark asked for a clarification of where these proposed numbers came from. George and David explained the process and a bit of history.
David called for a vote on the proposed allocation of money coming into the federal account, and allocation of the funds on hand in the federal account, as listed above. The proposal was accepted.
David called for a vote on the proposed allocation of money coming into the state account, and allocation of the funds on hand in the state account. Jon and Bob Underwood are excluded from this vote. The proposal was accepted.
Reimbursement
Note that $22.10 was spent printing 85 copies of the newsletter.
$126 for the Boston Pride Festival
$50 for insurance for Boston Pride
$150 for renewing Soapblox hosting of GoldMassGroup.
The 2 charges for Boston Pride should be charged to the federal account, fundraising etc. sub-account, Soapblox is charged to state account, public communication sub-account.
The state has rules about reimbursement where you're supposed to have invoices, George discussed with Jason Tate at the OCPF about our method of validating the payment for the printing. The OCPF agreed that if the facts were as we described that our method was sufficient and acceptable.
David will write 2 checks to George for $22.10 and $126. No vote is needed as these have already been appropriated.
National Conference in June
George explained there had been planned to be a state chair's convention in mid-February, but it was canceled due to illness of the coordinator. There was going to be a NH Free State Project event at the end of February which was canceled. George's proposal is to hold a 1 or 2 day event at a location near the Manchester, NH airport, bringing people from across the country. The date of June 18-19 was chosen to be just before the Free State Project's PorcFest event in NH.
George's rough estimate on a budget is to ask attendees for $75 to $100, and there would be banquet events with good speakers. With 100-200 attendees, the take will be $15,000 - $20,000. We compensate a small number of speakers. By June we should be able to have a presidential debate of the legitimate candidates.
This may be co-sponsored by Liberty for America, which would ease the financial burden.
Alwin expressed a concern whether we have the resources to pull this off. George said we would need a fair number of volunteers handling registration, etc. You need people to handle logistics.
Alwin asked if we should have a meeting with people from NH to work out some of the details.
Bob Clark asked where we would advertise. George listed a number of internet sites.
David asked about a decision deadline, and George said by the end of February.
George posted a thread on the forum concerning this.
Dick asked what do we get out of the event? Answer is money for a national Libertarian advertising campaign.
George said that he would put together a detailed proposal for the February meeting, that we could vote on.
David asked for a straw poll to make sure it's worth George's time to do serious investigation. The committee agrees that it's worth investigation.
State Convention
George asks if there is agreement among the committee to invite presidential candidates to the state convention. Everyone agreed that would be a good idea.
By-law Changes
Nothing to bring forth at this time.
Other business
George moved to appropriate up to $350 to do a fundraising mailing to a suitable list of anti-tax libertarian supporters, who are not the same as our regular supporters. Bob Clark seconded. According to OCPF rules, the donor lists of referendum supporters are available. There are several of these. A vote was taken, the motion was adopted.
Alwin announced that a Tea Party tax day event is going to be held in Worcester, and asked if we should reserve space there, or just circulate? He may have a proposal by next meeting.
David said someone tried to call the old 800 number and found that it was no longer connected. George said that we should use his number, which is the contact number on the web site.
Motion to adjourn made and adopted at 5:09.
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