Give Us Liberty (22 page)

8. R
ETAINING
A
CTIVISTS

R
ETAINING THE VOLUNTEERS WHO
will become actively involved with your group goes hand-in-hand with recruiting them. Signing people for FreedomWorks and getting them involved with your chapter is great, but if their involvement goes no further than their initial excitement over FreedomWorks, they are less of an asset to your chapter. Retaining volunteers from battle to battle will truly build and strengthen your chapter and FreedomWorks. This section outlines some of the best ways to retain your chapter's volunteers and keep them active in the fight for lower taxes, less government, and more freedom.

Calls to Action

What FreedomWorks calls a “call to action” is probably the most important component to retaining your chapter's volunteers. This is an action related to a FreedomWorks campaign that gives people something productive to do. It can take the form of a petition, a letter to an elected official, or calling people to get them to attend a rally.

Calls to action keep the members of your chapter engaged and retain them as FreedomWorks volunteers. National issues such as taxes and federal spending will have calls to action sent from the national FreedomWorks office. However, if you feel your chapter needs more to do or there is a specific local issue that you want to work on, let us know. We can help you brainstorm and come up with a variety of useful activities for your chapter and provide the materials and policy expertise to make them successful.

Now everything we do is posted on our Facebook page as well as our Twitter feed. So you can keep informed on the latest call to action there as well. The key is to help us make our calls to action go viral, reaching millions of people in a very short time.

A
CTIVIST
S
POTLIGHT
: R
YAN
H
ECKER

When the housing market collapsed, Ryan Hecker was living in Houston, Texas, with his wife and baby. A Harvard-trained lawyer, Hecker has always been a fiscal conservative. Like so many others, he had grown disillusioned with the Republican party in recent years.

“Where was the commitment to big ideas?” he said. “Reagan would not have been content to piddle around with tax credits and deductions. He inspired a new generation of young people to take the big issues head on, not tinker at the edges.”

Ryan remembered reading about the Contract with America in 1994. In high school at the time, he thought it was big and bold. The contract showed commitment to good governance and restraint in government growth. But as the years passed, he realized it came from the top down and was doomed to eventual compromise by career politicians.

So he thought about what he could do to bring back good governance and economic conservatism. “What if we the citizens come up with a contract from America and gave it to the politicians?” he wondered. It was an exciting idea, but how could just one person get that idea out?

After his chance encounter at a rally on February 27, Ryan became a member of the Houston Tea Party Society. Persuaded that he was part of something bigger than he had ever imagined, he decided he was going to try and make a go of his idea for a “Contract from America.” With a few thousand dollars out of his own pocket, Ryan began to build a Web site to collect ideas from activists. The ideas would be voted on and the top ten would form the contract. It would be a bottom-up, grassroots effort that would lay out the people's priorities. If a legislator wanted to be on the side of the people, they would have an opportunity to embrace a document created by the people.

With little fanfare, Ryan launched his idea on September 4, 2009, to be a place for the policy ideas of a movement.

Follow Up, Follow Up, Follow Up

The more you meet with your members, call them, e-mail them, or write them, the more active they will be. For instance, you may meet someone who is interested in your group at a gathering in your community. Make sure to get their contact information and call them in a couple of days to see if they have any questions or if they want to help out with your chapter's latest event.

Any time you receive a contribution for your local FreedomWorks group, make sure you send it to the national office as soon as possible so that we can process it and send your donor a thank-you letter. In addition, FreedomWorks encourages personalized thank-you notes and calls from you. Similar to recruiting, personal contact is critical to retaining people, especially when it comes to donors.

Activities and Events

Making sure your chapter always has something to do helps you to be more effective. It is also one of the best ways to retain your membership and keep them interested and active. While you will constantly be supported by the FreedomWorks national office, always try to focus on local issues as well; examples include petition drives, precinct walks, rallies, and special lobbying visits to the state capital. You will have the greatest success if the members of your chapter view your planned activities as important and a good use of their time.

Planned events also help reinforce the importance of your local group and retain the volunteers you have recruited. Although they often take more time, planning, and expense, events get more attention and can be fun. The FreedomWorks office can also make a policy expert available to speak at one of your chapter meetings or other events. One of the most requested things we do is teach grassroots leadership training seminars around the country. These popular sessions will teach your volunteers how to increase their effectiveness by learning and applying the strategies and tactics of community organizing that have worked for centuries.

National Retention Program

While nothing supersedes the importance of the personal relationships that you maintain, know that FreedomWorks has a national retention program that you can depend on to help you retain your chapter members. This program includes products, activities, and services offered by FreedomWorks to keep the volunteers in your chapter engaged.

Depending on the level of involvement of your chapter members, they will receive various materials and have the opportunity to participate in events throughout the year. Some of these include:

Reports and updates about what FreedomWorks is doing and what is going on in their state and in Washington, D.C.

FreedomWorks policy papers

Invitations to special FreedomWorks events

The opportunity to participate in strategy calls

A variety of different calls to action including petition drives, get-out-the-vote efforts, and contact-your-legislator campaigns

When it comes to retention, nothing can replace the volunteer group leader as the consistent, on-the-ground presence for your chapter. However, the national retention program should complement your efforts to keep your volunteers engaged and ready for the next fight.

9. F
UND-RAISING

O
NE OF THE HARDEST
tasks that you will encounter as a group leader will be the role you play as a fund-raiser for your chapter. The tireless energy needed to fuel your grassroots efforts will get you far, but you will need money. Many of the various activities and events that your chapter will engage in require funding in addition to planning and hard work for them to be successful.

The national FreedomWorks office will assist you in covering costs where we can, but raising money specifically for your chapter will further enhance and expand its scope of activities and events. As a result, FreedomWorks offers the following tips to help get you started toward successfully raising funds for your chapter.

Have a Fund-raising Goal

Working with the FreedomWorks national office, establish a realistic fund-raising goal and physically outline how you plan to get there in the form of a brief fund-raising plan. Periodically, discuss your plan during your conversations with the FreedomWorks' national office. FreedomWorks can help you figure out what is working with your plan and what needs to be adjusted.

Create Lists

As you get started looking at who you think would be likely donors to your chapter, start to create lists. Begin with those people you know and create a list of friends, family, church members, business acquaintances, members of service clubs, and so on, who know you. Draw from sources such as Christmas card lists, Rolodexes, and address books. Upon doing this, create two categories, ideological- and issue-based, and classify your prospective donors as one or the other. Your ideological list will comprise the donors who will give because they understand FreedomWorks and our mission, what our long-term goals are, and why it is important for your chapter to succeed. Issue-based donors will most likely be businesses that have a stake in the issue that you are working on at the time. After you have created your lists, you can then begin to form a plan of attack.

Mail Outreach

Fund-raising through the mail can be a great revenue source, but it is also very tricky. The components that make fund-raising through the mail successful are generally involved, expensive, and based on volume, so you will probably not be using this tactic as a primary source of fund-raising for your chapter. But you should still be on the lookout for issues that have wide-reaching impact and could make a good fund-raising letter. In some instances, the FreedomWorks national office could be able to put a budget together to help you mail on such an issue. In addition, lists that include donors to other organizations and/or campaigns are key to acquire in the event that a mailing opportunity arises.

A
CTIVIST
S
POTLIGHT
: T
OM
G
AITENS

To Tom Gaitens, the Constitution is more than just a document; it is the spirit of the nation. “I don't understand someone who spends years as an academic to become a ‘constitutional scholar.' The document is four pages, just read the thing and you understand exactly what the founders laid out for this nation.”

During the TARP debate, Tom was busy organizing demonstrations outside both Republican and Democrat offices. “The politicians were desperate to do something, even though what they were doing was the wrong thing. Without a second thought, they will spend a trillion dollars of other people's money if it gives them the political cover of ‘doing something.' The immediate impact of the stimulus bill was to make Congress feel better about their reelection prospects. That's a hell of a price tag for making 435 congressmen feel better. I wonder if they are so careless with their own money.”

Tom organized an activist training session in Tampa at the end of January 2009. He focused on how President Obama used grassroots tactics to win caucus states and beat Hillary Clinton's political machine. Tom talked about the importance of holding both Democrats and Republicans accountable at all levels of government. One of the people in the audience was Mary Rakovich.

“TARP was the spark and the stimulus package was the gasoline,” Tom explained. “When Santelli went on his rant, we were ready. For people like me working to get activists involved in the process, it all came together. I feel like this is a second American Revolution. We're ready to rediscover the importance of personal and economic freedom and not a moment too late.”

Telephone Campaigns

This is the primary tool you will use to reach out to the people on the lists you have created. Depending on those you are calling and how well you know them, you might feel more comfortable at first just talking about your group, how you have taken on the responsibility of a group leader and created a chapter in the area, and what you are trying to accomplish. Then you can ask the prospective donor if he or she would like to set up a meeting to talk more about how they can help and get involved. During that meeting make your fund-raising pitch or ask the person to join your advisory committee. Make sure before your meeting that you make use of the fund-raising experts in FreedomWorks' national office. They can help you better prepare for the meeting and work out your “pitch” to the prospective donor.

Develop an Advisory Committee

In many of the states that FreedomWorks has been actively involved on the ground, the advisory committee approach to fund-raising has proven quite effective. An advisory committee consists of a group of people (including members of the business community, prominent individuals, and other active persons) within the community whose responsibility it is either to give themselves or to solicit gifts for your chapter, generally in person. Make a list of the individuals you feel would be good candidates for your chapter's advisory committee and the possible chairs and cochairs. When you approach prospective members, be sure to stress the importance of your chapter and its work, but also be specific about what you expect from them. You have a goal, and the members of your advisory committee should be committed to helping you reach it.

Special Events

Included here are all breakfasts, lunches, dinners, barbecues, wine and cheese receptions, birthday parties, house parties, raffles, and other functions that can help you raise money for your group. In your fund-raising plan think about the kinds of events that you want to have throughout the year, how many you want (or think you will need), and when you want to have them and then draw up a quick time line or calendar. This will discipline you into making sure that these events are held.

From the stage at the Washington, D.C., Tax Day Tea Party on April 15, 2010.
Photo by Terry Kibbe

Remember that these events are different from others your chapter will engage in because the primary goal is fund-raising, not impacting policy or drawing a crowd. Keep your costs as low as possible; no higher than 20 percent of the amount you hope to raise. It is key to use your imagination and not your checkbook to make these events memorable; examples abound in our various state chapters of successful low-cost fund-raisers. In North Carolina, selling tickets to rocking chair raffles, hot dog dinners, and pancake breakfasts have all yielded positive results. In Alabama, a series of barbecues raised money, captured media attention, and promoted the chapter within the state. In all cases, the events first attracted people and raised funds because they were centered around specific issues, but had additional value because participants got to know FreedomWorks and became familiar with the local group.

Online Fund-raising

The wave of the future in fund-raising for grassroots groups is online donations. Online donations can be in the form of e-mail solicitations that direct people to our Web site, “money bombs” to raise a lot of money in the same day, a static donation button on our Web site, and fund-raising campaigns for a specific event or effort. FreedomWorks has had the most success by asking for various amounts of money that appeal to a broad cross section of society. We will ask for as little as $5 and as much as $5,000 online. The key is to convince potential supporters that we are fighting hard for the liberty movement and that their money will be well spent and not wasted.

If you plan to help us raise money online or raise money directly for your local group, the same rules and best practices apply. And utilizing online tools for fund-raising is one of the easiest, quickest ways to support your efforts. A group that does not take online donations is missing the boat and should immediately open up a PayPal account to start accepting funds.

We have a Web site and made an agreement with our web page designer and host to provide their services at no cost in exchange for our promotion of their companies. To date, their services are easily valued at over $5,000. We also have a similar agreement with a flag supplier, who donates a small portion of his sales to our organization. We do have a line of T-shirts, bumper stickers, and other assorted patriotic items that are available for purchase.

I have personally asked family, friends, and all in attendance at any of our events or speaking engagements to donate what they can. This has amounted to approximately $3,000. It is explained to them that we are willing and able to fight this fight, but it is the funding that enables us to do so. Some of our donations have come in denominations as small as $5 and some as much as a few hundred. We have even had a congressman make a donation to the cause. Most people cite the tight economy as their reason for not donating or for donating so little.

—G
REG
F
ETTIG
, H
OOSIER
P
ATRIOTS