SLEC Meeting 2/1/25

Kyle Russell said:
I support this motion but have one suggestion for an amendment to it. I agree we need to keep a presence at the Capitol and we owe it to Kevin who quit his job to do this for us.

My suggestion is if the legislative fund can raise the full amount of funds it needs this calendar year that the fund repay the $10k that is being taken from the general fund in this motion.
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I am not particularly in support, as the structure was to self-fund this line item, which I strongly supported as a brilliant way to get it done. We didn't get there, but made a series of choices in that space anyways. What are we going down to accommodate the ask? Are we stopping training? Are we reducing A/V equipment? How are we as an executive team managing our overall spend. I do NOT think this is an Ana issue. It is a SLEC one (including me) Where is the offset for the requested spend?
 
Mike Coogan said:
I am not particularly in support, as the structure was to self-fund this line item, which I strongly supported as a brilliant way to get it done. We didn't get there, but made a series of choices in that space anyways. What are we going down to accommodate the ask? Are we stopping training? Are we reducing A/V equipment? How are we as an executive team managing our overall spend. I do NOT think this is an Ana issue. It is a SLEC one (including me) Where is the offset for the requested spend?
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While not the purpose of this topic whatsoever, you decided to bring it up. The comms dept has not spent a dime on a/v equipment since the budget was passed. And allllll of this a/v equipment that we were informed was in storage is several mixers and a PA system. There is no requirement that we stream and we can just not stream and allow members of this party to read minutes when they are made publicly available.
 
Legislative action should be critical path for the organization, which has been pointed out by a few people. Impacting legislation is a foundational stone that LPTexas, and the Libertarian party as a whole, was founded on. Kevin did a phenomenal job last session, and is already off to a good start this session. On top of that we have members that are willing to give us a discount on their rental property to further lower the cost. $10,000 to have someone trusted putting in work while they are in session is a deal to me.

If we as a body are going to cherry pick legislative action we may as well just call it good game, shut the doors and go our separate ways.
 
Mike Coogan said:
I am not particularly in support, as the structure was to self-fund this line item, which I strongly supported as a brilliant way to get it done. We didn't get there, but made a series of choices in that space anyways. What are we going down to accommodate the ask? Are we stopping training? Are we reducing A/V equipment? How are we as an executive team managing our overall spend. I do NOT think this is an Ana issue. It is a SLEC one (including me) Where is the offset for the requested spend?
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While I disagree with your overall premises, especially since we are cash-heavy, I do have a suggestion for the best way forward. I do not think it is the PADs job to go through the other departments and start cutting them down to fund their asks. That is something where SLEC needs to make the hard decisions. If you or others believe we are overspending if we increase this then find the things that are less important and make an amendment to cut those things. IMO while training may be a very important core function, AV probably not so much. I would also say, since we are not a for-profit business, that while we cannot go into the red, profit in-and-of-itself is not a core function. As I don't have a complaint with us just funding it, I'm not a good person to do this, but figuring out what our priorities should be and, cuting the things that shouldn't be a priority, that's budgeting 101. If we don't fund this we are making a statement that everything we did fund was more important than legislative action whether it be the AV, events, the extra floof that we like to do at convention, a website, meeting software, a reserve fund. Whatever it is it was more important than legislative action.

I know these questions are hard, I know I'm reducing complex issues down to black and white, and I am not advocating to cut our other departments but I am very much saying that if people among us think cuts need to be made to accommodate this it is our job to bite that bullet and make those cuts and if we don't we are either saying everything else was more important than this or we are (again) demonstrating how dysfunctional we are as a body that we cannot complete our primary core function of setting priorities and making a budget.
 
John Wilford said:
While I disagree with your overall premises, especially since we are cash-heavy, I do have a suggestion for the best way forward. I do not think it is the PADs job to go through the other departments and start cutting them down to fund their asks. That is something where SLEC needs to make the hard decisions. If you or others believe we are overspending if we increase this then find the things that are less important and make an amendment to cut those things. IMO while training may be a very important core function, AV probably not so much. I would also say, since we are not a for-profit business, that while we cannot go into the red, profit in-and-of-itself is not a core function. As I don't have a complaint with us just funding it, I'm not a good person to do this, but figuring out what our priorities should be and, cuting the things that shouldn't be a priority, that's budgeting 101. If we don't fund this we are making a statement that everything we did fund was more important than legislative action whether it be the AV, events, the extra floof that we like to do at convention, a website, meeting software, a reserve fund. Whatever it is it was more important than legislative action.

I know these questions are hard, I know I'm reducing complex issues down to black and white, and I am not advocating to cut our other departments but I am very much saying that if people among us think cuts need to be made to accommodate this it is our job to bite that bullet and make those cuts and if we don't we are either saying everything else was more important than this or we are (again) demonstrating how dysfunctional we are as a body that we cannot complete our primary core function of setting priorities and making a budget.
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I broadly agree with you, and everything below is subject to your caveats. This is HARD, and I am wrong. Hopefully not very wrong, but I am just one opinion.

So, the original budget was roughly 38K/quarter of which roughly 20K was "keep the lights on" like software commitments, most of Comms, most Operations, and some minor SLEC stuff. Bottom line is it functionally zeroed "core mission" of legislative, training, and affiliate/candidate support, while keeping things required for any org and allowing for fundraising (website and the like). To be clear, that is a very, very bad situation, and the reality is we shouldn't ever go to no revenue. It "feels" like we are cash rich. But we are running a significant deficit since convention. 70K in first report and 20K in the last. We pulled in 52K in donations last half of 24, but 13K was a single donor (likely tied to events and special projects). Of the 52K, very little was sustaining. There was 14K at the fundraiser (likely overlapping partially with the 13K). We don't have an Events director, so if we hired the greatest guy in the universe, we are 3-4 months from holding another one. And while that fundraiser was a smashing success, it should have been larger (I am part of that problem). We do have cash locked up in directed donation funds, and Andrew is correct in characterizing that as core.

We are budgeted at 150K assuming LAC funds itself. That was an annual loss of 25K. The motion wants to make that -35K on an optimistic budget.

I have few talents, but I can analyze an organization's finances from years of fraud detection. Stunned the Harris CEC with calling the month National went bankrupt. I suspect National will get worse before it gets better. The news yesterday ALONE had several donors fleeing the party. And as much as we like to keep the focus on TX, when folks leave the LP, they leave us too. 80% (4 of 5) of our top donors from 2024 are gone. And they aren't coming back. It is really obvious looking at TEC what is going on.

I have all of this in a (now 6 month old) spreadsheet, that I would be happy to share with anyone who wants to question my assumptions/analysis (which again is wrong, because it is simply one view). It is a realistic scenario, but one of many. I put the spreadsheet together when I was planning on sponsoring an increase to the reserve. The Executive Committee did an excellent job of scaling the budget back and putting in new checks on initiatives like Legislative Action. Kudos to Jessi and Andrew for locking folks down. I backed off asking for the reserve increase with the amount of discipline shown in the budgeting process, and the cuts it proposed. But some expenses we can't avoid (website, email, etc). $206K sounds like a lot, but if we get even slightly off kilter, it unravels quickly.

I urge everyone to vote your conscience, but I would look for offsets before new funding is appropriated from the General fund. I want to reiterate that is a SLEC issue, and not a Legislative one, and it doesn't reflect poorly on Ana in any way.
 
Amanda Gibbs said:
While not the purpose of this topic whatsoever, you decided to bring it up. The comms dept has not spent a dime on a/v equipment since the budget was passed. And allllll of this a/v equipment that we were informed was in storage is several mixers and a PA system. There is no requirement that we stream and we can just not stream and allow members of this party to read minutes when they are made publicly available.
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Thanks Amanda. While Comms is certainly not a focus, and I personally believe it to be the last thing to cut (it is how we get money). I just needed to give an example.
 
Mike Coogan said:
I broadly agree with you, and everything below is subject to your caveats. This is HARD, and I am wrong. Hopefully not very wrong, but I am just one opinion.

So, the original budget was roughly 38K/quarter of which roughly 20K was "keep the lights on" like software commitments, most of Comms, most Operations, and some minor SLEC stuff. Bottom line is it functionally zeroed "core mission" of legislative, training, and affiliate/candidate support, while keeping things required for any org and allowing for fundraising (website and the like). To be clear, that is a very, very bad situation, and the reality is we shouldn't ever go to no revenue. It "feels" like we are cash rich. But we are running a significant deficit since convention. 70K in first report and 20K in the last. We pulled in 52K in donations last half of 24, but 13K was a single donor (likely tied to events and special projects). Of the 52K, very little was sustaining. There was 14K at the fundraiser (likely overlapping partially with the 13K). We don't have an Events director, so if we hired the greatest guy in the universe, we are 3-4 months from holding another one. And while that fundraiser was a smashing success, it should have been larger (I am part of that problem). We do have cash locked up in directed donation funds, and Andrew is correct in characterizing that as core.

We are budgeted at 150K assuming LAC funds itself. That was an annual loss of 25K. The motion wants to make that -35K on an optimistic budget.

I have few talents, but I can analyze an organization's finances from years of fraud detection. Stunned the Harris CEC with calling the month National went bankrupt. I suspect National will get worse before it gets better. The news yesterday ALONE had several donors fleeing the party. And as much as we like to keep the focus on TX, when folks leave the LP, they leave us too. 80% (4 of 5) of our top donors from 2024 are gone. And they aren't coming back. It is really obvious looking at TEC what is going on.

I have all of this in a (now 6 month old) spreadsheet, that I would be happy to share with anyone who wants to question my assumptions/analysis (which again is wrong, because it is simply one view). It is a realistic scenario, but one of many. I put the spreadsheet together when I was planning on sponsoring an increase to the reserve. The Executive Committee did an excellent job of scaling the budget back and putting in new checks on initiatives like Legislative Action. Kudos to Jessi and Andrew for locking folks down. I backed off asking for the reserve increase with the amount of discipline shown in the budgeting process, and the cuts it proposed. But some expenses we can't avoid (website, email, etc). $206K sounds like a lot, but if we get even slightly off kilter, it unravels quickly.

I urge everyone to vote your conscience, but I would look for offsets before new funding is appropriated from the General fund. I want to reiterate that is a SLEC issue, and not a Legislative one, and it doesn't reflect poorly on Ana in any way.
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When it comes to the topic of fundraising, it is obvious that LPTexas is in need of a development director, or contract fundraiser. Having a functional development department will do much more than an events director. The biggest issue we are facing, and I am guilty of it too, is that this body has become complacent on fundraising. One of our duties as representatives is to fundraise for the party, we should be doing outreach and soliciting donations in our respective districts. The majority of our funding has come out of the same pool of donors and eventually that pool will dry up.

I will say again that this $10k to legislative action is important to the movement. Kevin is constantly posting updates for us to follow his movements, which also allows us to take his words and use them to generate buzz around his efforts. Buzz around his efforts could draw outside funding if we put forth effort as individual members of this body.
 
Matthew Gibbs said:
When it comes to the topic of fundraising, it is obvious that LPTexas is in need of a development director, or contract fundraiser. Having a functional development department will do much more than an events director. The biggest issue we are facing, and I am guilty of it too, is that this body has become complacent on fundraising. One of our duties as representatives is to fundraise for the party, we should be doing outreach and soliciting donations in our respective districts. The majority of our funding has come out of the same pool of donors and eventually that pool will dry up.

I will say again that this $10k to legislative action is important to the movement. Kevin is constantly posting updates for us to follow his movements, which also allows us to take his words and use them to generate buzz around his efforts. Buzz around his efforts could draw outside funding if we put forth effort as individual members of this body.
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Can't argue with any of that. Kevin is fantastic, and we have desperately needed Development direction. Ginny was huge in that space, and will be hard to replace. Same can be said about Jodi. And the fundraiser we hired that didn't work out. Andrew personally guaranteed that, which is noble. And made the hard decision when it needed to be made. That said, if you look at the finances for real over the past several years, it has been a limited number of big donors that have funded the activities. That is true even in the latest TEC report. Events also brought in a disproportionate amount of dollars via ticket sales and auctions and the like. That was roughly 1/3 of our incoming funding (~150K over three years?).

Again, I don't want anyone to believe I am blaming anyone besides me. I just think it would be prudent to offset the cost. I am most certainly not criticizing any of the work that Kevin and Ana (or anyone else) is doing. I think it is great work. The LP is getting smaller, though. National needs to use that bully pulpit to draw in folks that are not ok with either party, and their product currently is not helping. I agree with your assessment that Kevin's work could (and will) drive money back. Again, without an offset, that is a dangerous road to go down, even when starting to go down the dangerous road we are on. Jessi's innovation in how to fund Legislative Action was great. It didn't pan out like we all expected. We need to learn from that and do something different. That's not Monday morning quarterbacking. It is reading the public reports anyone can do.
 
Andrew Amelang said:
This is intended to be a point of information rather than debate:

The Legislative Action Fund was created (by me, fwiw) specifically as a donor relations management piece. It was never meant to limit our budget for legislative action—Anastasia correctly noted at the budget meeting that our legislative presence should be thought of as a fundamental operating expense, perhaps the fundamental operating expense of our party. The point of the LAF is to give donors the confidence that their donations will be going straight (and only) to legislative action, not just 'keeping the lights on'. It's a donor psychology thing.

To the extent that we can bring in directed donations through the LAF, that should be considered the gravy. The meat is what we budget for operations; not the other way around.

We led with the LAF drive because that's the obvious first move in getting some momentum up. And to the extent we're able to accomplish our goal there that will definitely take some pressure off of us. There will be more fundraising through our donor channels as we go, and by the time the session ends we will have run several money bombs on social media. On top of that, at our meeting I'll be talking about a way the officers and representatives on SLEC can help with this effort.

But with all the above in progress we still have a job to do in Austin, and we still have money in the bank that's been sitting there awhile. Again, the budget for legislative action should not be limited to what the LAF brings in.
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I believe I asked that very question at the meeting, and you said the same thing. Thanks for the reminder.
 
Amanda Gibbs said:
While not the purpose of this topic whatsoever, you decided to bring it up. The comms dept has not spent a dime on a/v equipment since the budget was passed. And allllll of this a/v equipment that we were informed was in storage is several mixers and a PA system. There is no requirement that we stream and we can just not stream and allow members of this party to read minutes when they are made publicly available.
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I can volunteer to help operate the A/V equipment we already have if it means that we do actually stream the meeting(s) it's important that we go above and beyond where ever possible to maintain the level of transparency we've already established as LPTexas.
 
Two more things re the budget ask for legislative action....

First, it's not going to help Kevin to cannibalize other departments. We have a surplus in the bank; we've had it there for a couple of years now. Joe was 100% correct that major donors don't donate to watch us fatten our bank account; we as a party need to show that we're able to deploy the funds we've already been given if we expect to be able to raise more for something other than social functions, and we can put another $10K in Kevin's tank without jeopardizing our overall operations.

Second, Matthew is on point here:
Matthew Gibbs said:
The biggest issue we are facing, and I am guilty of it too, is that this body has become complacent on fundraising. One of our duties as representatives is to fundraise for the party, we should be doing outreach and soliciting donations in our respective districts. The majority of our funding has come out of the same pool of donors and eventually that pool will dry up.
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Or as the LPTexas Bylaws put it:
The District Representatives shall actively work to further the growth of the Party.
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As of Saturday we should have call lists for each SD available for Reps to start dialing for dollars, promoting specifically our legislative action and our Legislative Action Fund. You can help raise money and help clean our data at the same time, a win-win deal! If you have never done this before but are willing to learn, there are people who can help you, and we'll be talking more about that on Saturday.
 
Andrew Amelang said:
It's customary to request time on the agenda; how much time do you think you'll need?
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I will ask for 30 minutes. I am sure people will be unhappy that the motion pushes the meeting out until 5:05 PM. I doubt that will be enough time, but we can always finish things on the forum. I am posting a draft and hoping others will get me their feedback and thoughts before the meeting. In addition to the code of conduct, I will be including a by-law change in the motion as well to incorporate the code of conduct.
 

Attachments

Andrew Amelang said:
Two more things re the budget ask for legislative action....

First, it's not going to help Kevin to cannibalize other departments. We have a surplus in the bank; we've had it there for a couple of years now. Joe was 100% correct that major donors don't donate to watch us fatten our bank account; we as a party need to show that we're able to deploy the funds we've already been given if we expect to be able to raise more for something other than social functions, and we can put another $10K in Kevin's tank without jeopardizing our overall operations.

Second, Matthew is on point here:

Or as the LPTexas Bylaws put it:

As of Saturday we should have call lists for each SD available for Reps to start dialing for dollars, promoting specifically our legislative action and our Legislative Action Fund. You can help raise money and help clean our data at the same time, a win-win deal! If you have never done this before but are willing to learn, there are people who can help you, and we'll be talking more about that on Saturday.
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Did we get the lists? Did I miss it?
 
HEADS UP! Some of you are already Control Panel Users on NationBuilder (mostly staff folk), but many of you are not (yet). If you receive an email inviting you to start an account with NationBuilder, please accept! Don't make Ginny come track you down! ;)

We are in the process of setting up NB access for District Reps. Armed with this access, you will be able to contact and get to know your constituents (or at least the ones that have an SD number in NB; we're working on those other guys).

For the curious, the number of SD-identified constituents per district ranges from 5 in SD31 to 1291 in SD14. (Sorry, Ted and Clark; maybe Jack can help you when he finishes off his list in one evening....) The average is about 300.

More on Saturday. Just wanted to be sure y'all know to look for that email and set up your login for NB.
 
At the November SLEC meeting, I now we still had a few more days of our Houston Chronicle/Hearst Story Studio campaign and Comms did not yet have final numbers to report. Can Comms please provide a detailed final report on that effort?

Just to say it, I'm suspecting that we didn't see much ROI from that initiative, but I'd rather see the data than assume. Either way, we never know if something will work until we've tried it, so even if it was a bust, it was a lesson learned!

Also, is the Story Studio piece still "live" where Comms can still push it on socials from time to time? Did Hearst have any recommendations/feedback as to what we could have done differently?
 
Jessi Cowart said:
At the November SLEC meeting, I now we still had a few more days of our Houston Chronicle/Hearst Story Studio campaign and Comms did not yet have final numbers to report. Can Comms please provide a detailed final report on that effort?

Just to say it, I'm suspecting that we didn't see much ROI from that initiative, but I'd rather see the data than assume. Either way, we never know if something will work until we've tried it, so even if it was a bust, it was a lesson learned!

Also, is the Story Studio piece still "live" where Comms can still push it on socials from time to time? Did Hearst have any recommendations/feedback as to what we could have done differently?
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It is still live. Andrew had final convos with Hearst as I was in the hospital when we finalized. It was never gonna be a money maker but supposed to be educational. This is what we have been given by Hearst. https://hearststorystudio.studiosta...62e267cb6b6f33f723bcba229d0001d8024ae0ca6914e
 
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