Tactical Ideas For The LPCA

I've proposed to the LPCA ExCom that the former portfolio of Communications -- i.e., communication to our members and sympathizers, via California Freedom and our email list -- be supplemented with a new and separate portfolio whose job is encourage and enable members and sympathizers to communicate in turn with the non-libertarian world. The new portfolio would include tasks like:

• A web-based form for a libertarian to enter his zip and be able to compose and send a LTE to the significant media outlets for that area (cf. http://www.capwiz.com/lwv/dbq/media/)
• A web-base form for a libertarian to enter his zip and be able to compose and send a message to his representatives in Sacramento and/or D.C (cf. http://takeaction.lwv.org/lwv/dbq/officials/)
• A forum (e.g. Yahoo Group) that displays and archives the above messages
• Adopt-a-politician, in which a volunteer writes to (or an LTE about) the adopted politician at least once a quarter, and/or updates article(s) about that politician on Wikipedia/LPedia/LibertarianWiki
• Adopt-a-competitor, in which a volunteer attends and reports on local meetings of competing parties
• A web-based form for libertarians to give us a prospect acquaintance's
  • name, email address, city or zip
  • (suspected) current party registration or leaning (D, R, Grn, DTS, etc.)
  • referrer name, email address, city or zip
  • checkboxes of interested issues from a list of about 20 (e.g. these)
• A subscription list dedicated to alerts about outreach opportunities, e.g. public hearings, rallies, candidate call-ins, even (ugh) online polls
• A photo gallery of cars (plates obscured) with libertarian bumper stickers, and a bounty of five more free bumper stickers for every vehicle whose owner agrees to be stickered
• Property rights justice league -- monitor/attend local planning commission hearings and contact hassled property owners
• A photo gallery of public hearings attended or spoken at by libertarians
• List of top-Alexa-rated non-libertarian political blogs and suggested high-quality libertarian resources to reference in comments there
• A forum for logging one's call-in appearances on broadcast media
• A system to score and rank the efforts of libertarians for using the systems above. I'd be willing to fund cash awards for the top scorers. We could call it Lights of Liberty, Lasers of Liberty, Flames of Liberty, etc.

I also suggested that we conduct a survey of best practices of peer or near-peer organizations. We should look at e.g.

• other major-state LPs
• all significant California and national political parties
• the top 13 libertarian activist groups
• MoveOn.org, NRA, Emily's List, EFF, PETA, LWV, NAACP, etc.

and list potential practices to emulate in areas like

• self-service viral outreach like the ideas above
• member inreach communications (e.g. newsletters)
• dues structure
• organizing and fundraising.

Best of all would be to re-use any such investigation that anyone anywhere has already done.