Minutes/Strategy Meeting/2016-02-10

Meeting Minutes This document is a record of a meeting. Do not edit this document without contacting the relevant group first.

Agenda

• Fundraising
• General Business

Start: 20:41 AEDT
End: 22:00 AEDT

Minutes

Fundraising

• Running a political Party requires money, a lot of money.
• We do great at getting by on a shoestring budget, but we need a lot more money to effectively compete in elections.
• The cost of each Senate candidate is $2,000 in fees to enter.
  • If we ran in every State, it would cost $24,000 before we got a single corflute sign printed.
  • It is $4000 per state, because you need two candidates per state to have a box above the line.
  • https://pirateparty.org.au/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/costsgraphic_2015.jpg
    • If you cant have a box above the line there is almost no point trying as you then just get lumped into the ungrouped randoms that are below the line only.
  • does 20,000 really mean run in 5 states, or does it mean run in 3 but with supporting material etc.
• Our fund-raising campaign was well off our goal, we lack the human resources to effectively run a fund-raising campaign as it eats into doing politics and organising other activities which tend to be of a higher short term priority.
• We will have a functional membership database shortly which will make collecting membership dues much easier
• We have had a policy of free memberships for years, it has been important to attract new members, but collecting annual dues would create an instant improvement on our financial status. We are probably big enough that we can afford a drop in members due to people actually having to pay.
• Note that the Greens have started out emails requesting funds for their election campaign. once we've got the database up, that should be the first start, an email to all people on our books

• Merchandise
  • We also have merchandise ready to go with an Etsy store that is about to go live

• Our own kickstarter "style" webpage with a progress bar and perhaps some notional perks from the main page or ppau subdomain (not using an actual crowdfunding platform just imitate it like pros)?
  • and follow it with some socmed fury, strategise a tweet/facebook post timelines to bring it back to this fundraising page
  • there needs to be some brand development a bit prior to a main fundraising push, otherwise people will just go, "why?" rather than "here, take my money"

• We also have to raise money for the member data base system, but should get some help from other small parties and maybe NGOs to make that happen, so it isnt our burden alone

• Perhaps open with an initial email updating members as to what's happening and asking for donations, and then utilise other methods?

• The plan out of the last strategy meeting was to set up state election committees in the leadup to the election and have state do some of their crowdfunding to help with materials costs

• Cryptoparties? Wonder if it's not a clever low impact election softener/membership drive
  • need the people to host them and the time and money to organise them, good if you have a few people in a city wanting to run with it

• Brendan proposed creating a fundraising officer positon for the National Council at the up-coming congress later in the year

• How much work would it be to make our own crowdfunding page? ie pretty much a fancy version of the donations page...
• probably repurpose this page? https://pirateparty.org.au/warchest
• faulteh & Rundll made an app over a weekend recently as a prototype it's quite doable
  • just needed some integration with payments platform a bit
  • but that being said you can make all the pages you want but need to drive people to them with promises of content
  • we will have rewards
  • we are really short of people doing stuff -.-
  • campaign needs to have a timeline, stuff happens here... measure response, etc etc

• www.raisely.com
  • tl;dr ~3% fees but you can self host on your own domain
  • and it's campaign-driven crowdfunding
  • so it does all the hard work we'd otherwise have to do
  • and it's very very shiny
  • the code is good.
  • not just a page but a management platform
  • campaign driven meaning you have an organisation account
    • and you can run campaigns whenever you want
    • with specific pages for each campaign
    • but it's also organisation focused, not individual focused
    • it's developed for NGOs and activist orgs.

• What do people think about charging membership fees? (once the membership data base is in place)
  • How much? Should we have concession prices?
  • Optional to start with
  • I like the idea of having optional "pay more" things
  • membership form being deliviered by end of week (hopefully) is coded to assume it's always pay what you want lol.
    • default value in the text field is $50 though.
  • pay what you want is the best way to balance getting a bit more money and not losing people
  • All (full) members, paid or not can vote etc
  • new form finds the perfect membership type based on answered questioned.
  • Should paid members get option to pick a merchandise item?
  • Option: if we find that too few people renew this year, next year we say "< $20 gets you supporter membership only"
  • it'd require a constitutional change.
  • Have to be careful with rumours of needing 1500 members to be registered
  • see what comes out of the electoral reform shenannigans

• So get someone on NC to set up a raisely thing, who would be allowed to "start campaigns" or whatever the word is?
  • choose the subdomain pirateparty though - without the au
• So, we will keep pay what you want membership, and just prompt people with membership renewals
  • harass them regularly for a top up

• Also Brendan needs to update the ANCIENT donation platform we have
  • though we could just use Raisely for it
  • would be much much more convenient
  • basically don't have to maintain half the payments infrastructure if we just use theirs.
  • which is 1,000,000% better.

• Currently paying extra doesn't get you much. what about game-ifying it, giving people "badges" for donating more, or for continuous support?
  • thinking purely online, like steam badges.
  • there was the idea of people being listed as "donor of the month" similar to like an employee of the month... or alternately a supporter/donator hall of fame whereby (presumably after vetting) donors get a little pic and profile added.
  • Some resistance to gameifying ideas
    • Not a lot of social pressure in forum etc as it is not broadly enough used
    • pay to win is a bad concept.
    • PR fallout from all the obvious jokes would be most damaging to us.
    • actual material rewards may be a better way to get donations
  • the donor ofthe month type thing arose form the $250 canning reward
    • which we still need to fulfil (ie naming the person)
    • I think actual material rewards is a better way to get donations

• Posty from circlejerk said we should challenge other paries to CS:GO tourneys >.>
  • fun, but unless we get good we will just keep losing money to more charities, heheh
  • those challenges can be good publicity, but shouldn't be relied on as fundraising in any way
  • even then, if we win, we'd almost feel obliged to give at least half to the charity anyway depending on the charity, otherwise publicity could turn sour

• I suspect we'd get some bad publicity if we went the bank robbing option

General Business

• Nothing of note