Now with the late-evening segment.
They are calling the meeting to order and taking roll. LPCA Chair says that LPCA examined civicrm, concluded it would not work at the state level, and did not see how it will work well for national. LPCA Chair reads a well-done composed speech, endorsing McArdle’s planned political strategy, urged support of the current staff (Kraus is not at the meeting), and hope past errors are corrected. LP Colorado says CIVICRM is an obstacle to progress. LPCO chair says patience is wearing this. Next speaker (Pietro?) says national party is moving the wrong way. Says Mises strategy is good, reviving the Ron Paul Revolution is good, but execution is poor so far, so he is now running for national chair.
LPCO Vice Chair complains that CiviCRM is not a viable product. Secretary says no one is being forced to use civicrm. Condemns Pietro Geraci for using public comment to announce he is running for national chair. Says everyone on the LNC is doing the best they can.
We reach a motion to amend the Policy Manual. We reach the Policy Review Committee, which sometimes gets to review press releases before they went out. The authority of the Committee is being clarified. Tuniewicz asks a question. Nanna calls the question. Chair objects, so that the Executive Director can speak. Vote on calling the question. Secretary reminds chair that she must count the negative votes. Secretary explains to the chair that a 10-6 vote is not a 2/3 vote. Agreement that a rollcall would have been faster. Huston expresses desire to streamline review process. Question called 15-1.
Mr. Blankenship appointed to the Policy Manual Committee. The Policy Manual is divided between special rules and standing rules. The content has become mixed. Secretary proposes combining them into one object and making the chair decide which is which.
Hagopian nominates Robert J Hamilton from Colorado as Assistant Treasurer. Discussion of Joe Burns of Texas, but did not eventuate in a nomination. Hamilton joined in 2020 and is an accountant. Election passed without objection.
CiviCRM discussion. Mr. Huston and Mr. Buchkovich as staff members will present and take questions. They are apparently the only staff members present. Huston — our staff and lnc members are excellent and flush with ideas for fundraising. All our eggs are in the civicrm basket. Civicrm was not designed as a fundraising tool. They are more about engagement. We had some turnover in technical people. We needed to hire a firm to evaluate civicrm. The people we hired never got to evaluating the documentation. civicrm has five ways to set up permissions. Each of these was about 20% set up. Permissions were so complex that it took the outside group seven hours to setup their permissions. Apparently the tool has been set up in a complicated way.
Problems: slow load time. Apparently giving someone a slice of data to do calling is impossible; you have to export data. CiviCRM cache fills and even donors cannot donate. Civicrm is not designed for analysis. Search tools are very limited. There are three search tools, and they give inconsistent answers. Export is unreliable and very slow. Data is disorganized and perhaps inaccurate. We aren’t confident in the data if we want to find people who are about to expire are just expired. The data and data tools give non-reproducible results. Membership reports since we went to civicrm are not reliable.
There is a firm doing evaluation. They said that the systems is badly broken and that they pulled their punches in their evaluation. Evaluation will be shown to the LNC.
Q? What is wrong that the membership numbers? We are trying to work this out. CiviCRM does not support the bylaws definition of the membership. They are apparently not sure what the problems are. The membership definition requires matching with financial data, which is not trivial.
Q? Is the problem in tech or in our implementation. Huston: The setup is highly unorthodox. Many of the things people want to do are not implemented within civicrm.
Harlos:Is it salvageable? Was the LNC sold on something that turns out to be the wrong solution? Why does it work in Indiana; ask their people? Buchkovich: We have to support us and the states by fixing civi. If we had not transferred from Raisers Edge, I would say we should fix civicrm first. Huston says civicrm is salvageable. The outside evaluation group is working on the roadmap on how to fix it. If I follow there will be volunteers who will actually fix it; the outside group is the step before that. Indiana is successful because it uses additional tools. Proposal is that Indiana identifies each business process they want and then sets up the tool.
Q: What is the time line? We need the report back from the consultants. “There is no quick fix”. We would like a summit with state fundraising directors. They do not expect a short timeline for fixing.
Nanna: Membership goals; we want a frank discussion which requires executive session. I want staff to be available for questions. Moved to go to executive session to discuss staff expectations and political strategy , specifically with regards to membership and fundraising. They advance to a breakout room. I confirmed that the staff is extremely aware that the membership count has to be accurate when the delegate counts are fixed this Fall. 9:28: They are still in executive session. 10PM Still in Executive Session.
Return to session.
Nanna: Moved that the board sets a fundraising goal of $100,000 for this month, $120,000 for June, and $120,000 for every month thereafter.
This will be a task for the staff and the board. Bowen: We are in a crisis. We need all hands on deck, working on fundraising. Nekhaila: Motion will push staff and board in the right direction. If we are asking people for money, we should contribute ourselves.
Duque: I advocate raising money. I am opposed to this motion right now because it does not solve the root problem,which is a failure to deliver value to our members and affiliates, the tools, resources and strategic vision needed to achieve liberty. A numerical revenue will not solve the problem.
Ford: Need money to provide ballot access. Without that our party will crumble. We now have a state rep in Vermont, thanks to the state chair. We have the raw video of the entire event. State rep will promote defend the guard and libertarian values.
Eiler: Agree with Duque. My expertise in marking and predictive analytics. It seems ludicrous given the problems with our data to be make any prediction about what we can do moving forward. Committing to a number does not do anything. Effort and strategy are needed. Duque – No, Dassing – No, Eiler -no, Ford -Yes, Gabbard – No, Hagopian Yes, Harlos Yes, Nanna-Yes, Rufo -No, Tuniewicz Yes. Yaescavitch -Yes, Watkins -Yes. Vote was 11-5 in favor.
Discussion of adjourning to time certain. Executive Director is taking two week vacation and returning the 22nd. Move to adjourn to Monday the 22nd at 8PM. Schedule did not work. They did a simple adjournment.
Nick Sarwark could be working behind the scenes remotely helping the rogue group. He doesn’t have to physically be in Michigan. It’s well known he hates Mises. He just slammed leadership in a comment on this thread.
The national party had spent money in several states dealing with legal fees, New Mexico for example, over rogue groups attempting to overthrow the legitimate body. They are now spending in Michigan.
I think Ron is on to something.
It is noteworthy that Operations Manager Robert Krauss was not present at the meeting.
I approved your claim so it could be discussed. What are you referring to? Where did the party spend money on legal fees? Nick has not been on the LNC since 2020. The Michigan dispute is between two Michigan groups that disagree about the validity of state conventions…Nick Sarwark is not in Michigan.
The party is in shambles because of Nick Sarwark and company attempting to overthrow affiliates, thus costing the LP money in legal fees.
I like the new leadership for the most part. I don’t want to go back to the days of praising Bill Weld.
Nick, Thanks for pointing out that if the complicated software refuses to work they can always try using simple software that will be adequate for the purpose.
“Huston — our staff and lnc members are excellent and flush with ideas for fundraising. All our eggs are in the civicrm basket. Civicrm was not designed as a fundraising tool. They are more about engagement. We had some turnover in technical people. We needed to hire a firm to evaluate civicrm.”
Effective fundraising can and frequently is done with simple spreadsheets. The mechanics of identifying, contacting, and appealing to donors through various channels do not depend on having a perfect CRM and this blaming of software and software transitions is making excuses, not doing the work to turn fundraising around.
Whether this LNC will hold the Executive Director accountable for a demonstrated failure to execute at the responsibilities of the position remains to be seen, but the abject failure along every objective metric is indisputable, no matter how long they delay releasing the numbers or how much corporate bafflegab is used to distract from the failure.
The Libertarian Policy Institute and Libertarian Policy Foundation will continue to fill the gap in what is being done and recently finished curriculum design on our Amplify training program to train candidates and activists on how to run a policy-first campaign for public office. People who wish to be supporting members of that and other work can sign up at libertarianpolicy.org/member
“everyone on the LNC is doing the best they can”
If this is true, it may be worse than if it is false.