[Membership] Fwd: Proposal for Chapter building loans - need co-sponsor, vetting

[Ron Francis]

I'm not sure if membership has met or will meet but I submit this proposal for "vetting" by the membership Committee.
   
  If the proposal cannot be vetted it will have to wait for the next statecom I guess.

Ron Francis <ronwf777 at yahoo.com> wrote:
  Date: Sun, 7 Jan 2007 11:07:52 -0800 (PST)
From: Ron Francis <ronwf777 at yahoo.com>
Subject: Resend: Proposal for Chapter building loans - need co-sponsor
To: State Committee Official Business <statecom at green-rainbow.org>

This email is resent with the student intern report included at the end      
  Title:  Chapter Building / Rejuvenation Loans:
   
  Text of proposal:
   
  This proposal authorizes either co-chair to give up to 10 no interest (!) loans (over a period of 3 months) of $200 each to people who have identified an anchor in a given community who is willing to commit to 6 meetings over a period of 6 months following a 2 month outreach plan in a given local community.  The outreach plan must be presented to a co-chair using various outreach techniques that may include phonecalling, physical mailing with survery, literature drop and person to person networking.  The funds can be used to offset start-up expenses that incude part-time staff help, mailing costs, copying costs.  A co-chair is aurthorized to approve the loan if the co-chair determines that the plan is feasible and reasonably well developed.
   
  Background:
   
  Various Chapter-building modalities have been tried by the GRP including the West Somerville Model summarized below:

This work was done by a student for a Service Learning
Project at Shrewsbury High School to rejuvenate the Somerville Chapter work.

A) Time spent:

The total time for outreach was 9 hours. 

To put stamps on 230 envelopes: < 1 hr. Return labels
on 460 envelopes (230 being the recipient envelopes) &
stuffing the 230 into the bigger envelopes: 2 hrs. Put
name labels on 230 envelopes: < 1 hr. Stuffing
envelopes three times (three separate pieces of
paper): 1 hr.15. 130 initial phone calls: < 2 hrs.
Second, third round of phone calls: 30 minutes.
Additional time spent counting/recounting, reworking
Excel database, adding additional columns to database,
and driving. 

The process in its entirety of reaching 230 people by
mail and 37 people by phone took about 8 hours for me,
plus about an hour or so from Ron Francis helping with
flyers and a few calls and emails. Total 9 hours. 

B) Money Spent

Total money spent was $172 dollars. I spent $12.58 on
a box of 500 no. 6 envelopes, even though I only used
230, and I am returning the remainder. I spent $85.47
on 230 stamps. I spent $73.66 at Staples for the
three pieces of paper included in the envelopes to be
copied and folded. 

The grand total is $171.71. (Note: In order to raise
money, perhaps at the meetings for each chapter, they
could pass a hat around to collect donations. Or
maybe the membership committee would cover some of
these one-time costs, if this method proves workable
for jump-starting other chapters)

This cost of 172 was offset by $90 raised by the group
at the meeting in small donations.

C) The mailing 

There were 543 names of Green-Rainbow Party Somerville
residents. 130 had phone numbers, while 413 did
not. Of the 413, I sent out 100 of the flyers to
random residents in the 02144 area code (close to
meeting location). In total 230 pieces of mail were
sent out. (It will be interesting to see if there is
any difference in the turnout between those who
received phone calls and those who did not. At the
meeting we will ask how people heard about the
meeting) 

D) The phone calling 

Of the 130 with numbers, I tried 115 of them, while
Ron Francis tried 15. Our results were: 

93 whose phone numbers were disconnected, not in
service, had moved, were a wrong number, etc., 

8 who clearly stated they were not interested, 

15 who clearly stated they were interested, 5 of whom
said they were planning on attending the meeting, 

And 14 who did not return the phone messages. 

A day before the meeting I reminded all 15 interested,
and all 14 in their messages, to come to teh meeting.
and return the survey. The number of these returned
surveys is yet to be determined. 

Numerous phone calls revealed that some people had
misplaced or not seriously looked at the flyer they
received, and a few said they had not received it at
all. The 93 whose numbers were not good will serve
the same purpose as the additional 100 in the random
sample to see who shows up at the meeting without
having been reached via the phone. 

Of the 8 who said they were no longer interested, the
responses were: two because of a change of party, one
woman changing to democrat, two because their English
was not very good, one because she was finishing grad
school, one because she had just had a baby, one
because he was too busy, and one because she thought
the use of the mailing list would go better to saving
a tree instead of being sent to her. 

Of those who were interested but could not come, most
reasons were because of a conflict in date or because
they were generally interested but didn’t feel like
putting in the specific effort for this event. 

The general response I received was uncertainty in the
strength of the party. One particular initial
response I got was “I got no money.” People seem to
feel as if the party is always asking for money, and
in that sense, most people don’t seem very optimistic
about giving. Another man said how he preferred to
give money to the local chapter instead of Green Party
USA. One person asked why the Green-Rainbow Party
didn’t join the Progressive Democrats to double the
strength into one party. Another man said how he
found that many advocates for the environment were
then guilty of not recycling, etc. themselves. He
thought that the party should concentrate on the
environment more. 

One woman mentioned how she used to receive the
Green-Rainbow Party e-mails until she blocked them. 
She found them very irritating because they often only
stated a reminder that she was a member, and she
recalls that they never really included very important
information. One man found the survey to be very
rigid and formulated, so he didn’t fill it out. He is
however coming to the meeting, so we will definitely
be able to hear his two cents. 

One man is disabled, and rarely leaves the house. He
was not sure if he would come or not, especially due
to his low energy and low capability to take in a lot
of information. He said he thought he could be helpful
with phone calls, if we needed. He has a big problem
with the government, social security, the court
system, and the way it is run, and said if anyone had
a problem with the court system, he would be on the
front line to help them. He also had strong interests
in animal rights, including cats, dogs, and other
animals, such as raccoons, the environment, and the
education system. He works in an after school program
a few days a week. One man was concerned about the
dinner being a vegetarian meal, which of course, it
was. 

Two people we called said that they would not respond
to telephone calls, and one at the meeting said the
same, and that he’d prefer to be contacted via mail or
email. 

My feeling is this: Of all these various and specific
concerns comes a party with a lot of potential, if
only it could encourage its members via some tangible
evidence. I told all of those willing to listen about
the win in the Cambridge school committee, and the
ballot question win in Waltham about land development.
Many people were excited and interested, but those
were the people who were already interested. 

However, beginning with GRP members gaining
recognition in other committees and winning election
questions / candidacies, perhaps real change can begin
to occur, eventually having with low-income families
beginning to speak out in favor of the GRP. 

E) What could be done better: 

Phone numbers: We will need to try the phone book more
often in order to get more phone numbers. (It will be
interesting to see if using peoplepages.com will yield
more correct phone numbers than the ones provided by
Dan through that phone service.) 

I think that sending members a copy of the GRP
newspaper would encourage them more, sending those on
the borderline of interest over to the side of
interest. (Ron was supposed to do this but he got busy
and didn't) 

Other than that, I don’t know how much you can improve
communications with each member without having their
telephone number. The success of solely sending mail
will be proved at the meeting. 

Perhaps door-to-door contact would be the next step. 
Also, at the door, there should be a sign-in sheet,
along with a list of members who do not have phone
numbers, so those who attend the meeting can look over
the list for people they know whose numbers they could
give us. 

The only other way to get the numbers of those who do
not attend the meeting would be to specifically send
them letters asking for their numbers, and wait for
responses. 

F) Overall results of the outreach part of experiment:


Out of 37 people contacted by phone numbers, 5 people
said that they would show up at the meeting, although
typically only 50% will actually come so that may be 2
people but perhaps those 2 will bring others. Still
these 5 could be counted as being interested and may
come to future meetings. 

Of the 10 who said that they were interested but could
not come, perhaps some will show up in the future. It
may also be that some folks bring other folks (some
said that they know people who may be interested) 

It is encouraging that 15 out of 37 people that I
talked to were interested. If we can figure out a way
to turn that interest into participation then that
would be very good. There are already some active
GRP people in Somerville who may bring some people to
the meeting. Ron said that his friend Bob Cable from
Somerville Divestment Project is coming (didn’t come
but called and was very interested and even upset that
he couldn’t make it) and Jamie did some outreach as
well. 

Other cities may not have as many active GRP’s,
proportionately to their size, although they might, so
this should be factored in determining the net effect
of this experiment. It was cold and snowy on Sunday
so that might have affected the meeting results. The
meeting is being held at a place that has public
transportation so that is another variable. 

Personally I would like to stay involved with the
party, and maybe other students could be encouraged to
take on such a project in another city. 

G) Results of the Meeting:
Eleven people were there, 5 women and 6 men. (plus
jamie's little son)

Of seven people (including Ron and me) who said they
would come, five showed up, so the additional six who
came had not been contacted via the telephone. They
told us they had heard about the meeting via e-mail,
or had gotten the mailing (I think 3 and 3). The
total cost for the meeting was $170, but we raised $90
by passing a cup around.

Surprisingly every member at the meeting said they
would show up for the next meeting January 15th.

Everyone agreed to take a look at the phone list and
identify people that they knew and could contact by
phone (since many numbers were missing).

One man agreed to get information about energy usage
issues in Somerville. Another man agreed to get
information about military recruiting. Two people
volunteered to organize an activity for youth
interested in GRP to make events more family friendly.

Others seemed generally willing to participate. Lot
of discussion about climate / traffic and how that is
interconnected to need for oil based foreign policy.

For about 90 minutes the group discussed issues
important to members and how to go about them. 

There is a copy of the minutes from the meeting listed
below, which gives some detail about every issue
discussed.