How to improve communication between HQ and the grassroots!! *PLEASE VOTE!!!*
Submitted by fight4liberty on Sat, 01/05/2008 - 01:17The following post on a recent thread expresses really well what I feel is one of the major flaws in our campaign:
57chevypreterist wrote:
“In my opinion, there should not be such division between the grassroots and the official campaign. The official campaign should be listening to and interacting with the grassroots and the official campaign should be willing to make changes as necessary in the best interest of getting Ron Paul elected. There are a lot of willing folks out here with a lot of talent and energy, and they should not be overlooked or ignored by the campaign. True teamwork and leadership needs to come quickly from HQ, or the grassroots will become soured and discouraged.”
Like many of you I have put a lot of thought into this situation and IMHO I have come up with a very workable way for us to fix this communication problem. See what you think.
But first picture yourself as the Director of Communications at HQ or whatever staff position it is that handles the thousands of emails from the grassroots. Each email that comes in goes into detail about some perceived problem, grievance or suggestion, etc. etc. What would you do if this was your job? Would you start tabulating all the different grievances and suggestions and then try to summarize the results and then make a report to give to the “correct” staff member? No, this would be impossible for one person to do, right? So, would you hire more staff to sort through the tons of emails to try to make some sense of them?
No, because this would grossly waste staff time and campaign money. So, no wonder thousands of us have never received an answer back from our emails. And HQ staff should ignor this avalanche of completely disorganized and overwhelming emails. You see the problem is each one of us as an individual by himself doesn’t command enough attention because one person’s opinion is not considered important enough to be taken seriously.
So, it is our responsibility to come up with a way to organize and summarize all the important things we want to communicate to HQ and to put it in a form that can be easily and rapidly understood and which commands their attention.
How could we do this? Some people have suggested nominating or otherwise selecting an “advisory committee” or a “communication committee” that would act as ‘representatives“ or “leaders” of the grassroots community. Too many of us (including myself) have objected to this approach because, at least from my viewpoint, it would be giving too much power to these representatives and besides a handful of people contacting HQ isn’t going to do much better than individuals contacting HQ.
No the real reason for rejecting this approach is because we don’t need representatives to communicate or lobby for our interests. All we need to do is agree to adopt a direct voting approach on these various subjects that we want to communicate to HQ. It would be a piece o’ cake for our IT savvy folks to set up a master website that is linked to the various RP blogs and websites that could do high volume polls on any subject, such as voting for the TV ads we like the best (including HQ’s and the grassroot’s ads), and the many, many other projects and ideas flying around.
We’ve been told that HQ visits and reads the various RP blog spots and websites anyway to keep in touch with what’s going on in the field, so having a central website for them to visit to quickly take the pulse of the grassroots would be very effective for our purposes and useful for them as well.
But mainly this approach would be a way for us to apply the free market principle to handle such things as the concerns of many supporters that the official campaigne’s TV ads need to be better. By putting all of the TV ads of both HQ and the grassroots on the website and having 500 to 1000 RP supporters rate them (1 – 5) and then averaging these ratings it would let HQ know very clearly how we feel about their ads.
We could then vote on which of the ads the majority of us want to continue to support with our money and time. It would just be the market forces at work pure and simple. And if they see that more and more people are getting less and less inclined to donate to their ads then we know that something will change, right?
Don’t make the mistake of thinking this idea is some kind of power play or ploy, it will just be each of us being honest with ourselves and HQ about how we feel. And another thing this will not be a case of majority rule without minority rights because those that like the official TV ads will vote for their ads and continue to donate to HQ as they have been all along. But if it looks to HQ that they will be getting less donations they will most definitely make some kind of changes and this will be welcomed in the long run by HQ and the field because it will greatly increase the effectiveness of the campaign which all of us want.
Having one website where all the TV ads and the many different projects are rated will also be very useful for each of us to help us decide what we as individuals want to put our money and time into. And this is a very needed thing because our most successful activities in the past have been ones we all agreed to focus on and contribute to and this brought us all together as a team which makes it a lot more fun, too.
And as far as I know the FEC rules only say that the campaign can’t tell us what to do because it could be considered that the costs involved in such activities are contributions to the RP campaign, but I am not aware of any FEC rules saying we can’t inform them of what we are thinking and what we want (anyone familiar with this should fill in the blanks here if they have contrary information).
************
UPDATE: One comment said what I am proposing here is in part the same thing that moveon.org does when they frequently give its members polls on which ads they like best, etc. I like my idea even more now!!!
************
LET'S KEEP THIS BUMPED UP UNTIL WE GET TONS OF VOTES!!
PLEASE VOTE ON THE FOLLOWING 2 QUESTIONS!!!
(copy this and paste to comment page).
1. Do you like the overall concept allowing for the fact that the details will need to be worked out? Yes/No
2. Why?
3. Other comment:
Yes!
I think someone else started a similar thread to this. Something needs to be done immediately. The grassroots group genius is being completely wasted. There needs to be an immediate, workable interface with NHQ. Thanks for taking the time to share you thoughts on this. Time is running out. Hopefully a good showing in NH will buy us more.
communicate with the campaign
send a donation at https://www.ronpaul2008.com/donate/
Money is a great communication. I suspect it is as nice as roses.
get supporters to register at http://voters.ronpaul2008.com/grassrootscentral.test/menu.php
Thats a lot of communication. Thats basically how you communicate to the campaign. Thats the flow ino the campaign.
You get your return flow when you get see Ron Paul in person or on a You Tube. When you see the NH results.
Send complaints to the CFR I am sure they would love to hear them. You can contact them at any FOuX email address.
I am not a Collectivist and don't intend to join the group.
Freedom is not FREE!!
Ron Paul promotes individualism and personally I am an INDIVIDUAL! If you as an individual want to do this I think that is a great thing. If you want to impose your collective views on the campaign or myself I totally object. That type of thought is against what Dr Paul is trying to accomplish.
Create your own type of ads. Run your own ads. I think Dr Paul is doing what HE feels is the right thing. We must remember that our job is to help. If you disagree with the way things are being run then contact the campaign. If that still does not work then do your own and pay for it.
I am working to get him elected and then be left alone by the government. I am not looking to join a group, as I am sure that most people including myself site would invite you for a beer but you are not staying the night.
Nuff Said!!
Freedom is not FREE!!
Could someone please show me where...
NHQ has asked for better communications with and/or coordination with grassroots?
My perception has been of a lot of grassroots people crying into the ether and ... nothing coming back. Am I out of the loop in terms of the deep interest expressed by the NHQ to listen, to consult, to receive ideas, to get approval of the grassroots? If so, please point me to the topics where such concerns were expressed.
I've read many fine solutions, including this one, ... if NHQ were really curious about grassroots input and wanted to incorporate it. My guess is they are flat out and don't have time or inclination.
However, if NHQ lacks either the interest or the ability, then a better use of our time would be to focus on our own balliwick and trust them to do as good a job as they are capable.
So that we're not spinning our wheels, I think we need a bit more wisdom in the grassroots of the...
re[love]ution,
Dennis
Don't Vote For Ron Paul for anything less than
Re[love]ution & Renaissance
Dennis
Ditto
What Dennis said, I second.
WE ARE GOING TO WIN!
One way problem...
The grassroots has MANY times and in many ways given feedback, ideas, etc to the national campaign offices.
THAT direction of information "traffic flow" is not really a problem.
The other lane, however, is where the problem exists. The national campaign as it is currently run is AWOL on its communications with the grassroots.
Note that I am NOT talking about things in the FEC prohibited territory of the campaign giving us "instructions" or "directions" -- but rather in simple everday courtesy-level flow of information.
For instance, maxed out people who place orders for supplies -- do not even receive an ACKNOWLEDGEMENT email; much less any information about when or how or even what will be shipped from the requested order (jeepers, even small-time business operators are able to deliver THAT, and much more like a tracking number, etc). WHY? Is it some qeird combination of incompetence with some obtuse "control-paranoia-freak" at work? Who knows; but the problem exists with the national campaign, NOT with the grassroots.
The same applies to volunteers, events, schedules, etc. The campaign simply does not want to provide information -- which it easily could do in a very public manner. Why? The grassroots are completely free to either USE or IGNORE the information at their own prerogative... I mean if the Kentdoll or the Lewbot tried to tell me SPECIFICALLY what to do I would take it into consideration, but would make my own decision, which frees me (and them) from any consideration via FEC.
Communication is always a two-way street. In the case of this campaign, all the traffic is one way, with only an occasional motor-scooter's worth of feedback.
Foolishness.
So what this means is that it is entirely up to the national campaign to change ITS policies (and unless there is some type of shakeup, I highly doubt that it will happen, I can hope, but I remain a cynic).
Hear Hear!!
LOL WRellim. I thin we were channelling each other. Didn't mean to steal your thunder...
re[love]ution,
Dennis
Don't Vote For Ron Paul for anything less than
Re[love]ution & Renaissance
Dennis
ENOUGH TALK
To the tech savvy get this started immediately. Get this on the Ron Paul forums.com site.
Send word to the 2 or 3 guys doing really nice ads on youtube.com and lets get submissions of ideas.
There should be two categories IMHO.
1) Script ideas
2) Completed vids which can be voted on
We can use a free service like questionpro.com to tabulate and give real time response on which is mroe popular and we can submit the winners ona weekly basis.
LETS DO THIS AND STOP TALKING ITS A GOOD IDEA...I HAVE NO IT CAPABILITIES SO PLEASE IT GENIUSES GET IT GOING.
Lets do this for Dr. Yes.
-----------------DO YOU REALLY WANT RON TO WIN------------------
Ron needs more than just money. Send this strategy to mail@ronpaul2008.com and also to press@ronpaul2008.com if these ideas make sense to you
www.dailypaul.com/node/14009
-----------------DO YOU REALLY WANT RON TO WIN------------------
Ron needs more than just money. Send this strategy to mail@ronpaul2008.com and also to press@ronpaul2008.com if these ideas make sense to you
www.dailypaul.com/node/14009
Yeah, what he says. Do it,
Yeah, what he says. Do it, because otherwise this topic will sink into the abyss of frantic topic posts.
Again, Ron Paul says it best......
As in foreign policy, the same is true in running a Presidential election......if the course of action isn't working, your change courses...............immediately!
alan laney
Exactly
That is exactly what I have been trying to say as well. My proposal would do just that; create the position of National Leader to inform the campaign of events going on at ground level.
"It is not who casts the votes that decides elections, it is who counts them."
-Joseph Stalin-
This is not "exactly" what you have been proposing.
You want to create a national leader to inform HQ. I want to create a leaderless democratic voting approach which simply displays on a website a summary of whatever is the consensus opinion of the grassroots on ads, activities, etc. while at the same time allowing those that don't agree with the majority opinion to continue doing whatever they want to do on their own.
Originator of this thread.
fight4liberty
You want direct democracy
General Specific wants a representative republic.
I prefer GS, but anything is better than what we have now, which might be characterized in some was as leaderless, libertarian chaos.
Radio Ad
According to the HQ website, they are running radio ads in Alabama, California, Colorado, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, Maine and North Dakota.
This is the Radio # 1 ad & I strongly believe it is not very effective. It is a 60 sec. ad that spends the first 30 sec. talking about RP being a Dr. & flight surgeon. While that's good, it is not going to sway voters. We need ads that address our failing economy & out of control national debt, too much government control of health care, bringing our servicemen home, the run-away growth of government & their intrusion into our lives and liberties, securing our borders and national sovereignty.
There is some excellent material in the "Issues" section of the HQ website that I believe should be incorporated into the ads, radio & TV.
Ron Paul needs to be sending out messages that will resonate with the middle class & most of the points made in the "Issues" section will do exactly that.
Why wait
Why wait for another system, we already have one here. Couldn't Michael Nystrom just add a daily vote? We could then post request for vote on the other RP websites with links back here to vote. I agree with the poster, why not make it happen here? Can't someone the knows Michael Nystrom ask him to add a topic to the forum? It could then be monitored by HQ, simply easy. By using the email of DP we could ensure one vote per person.
Keep this website the "hub"
If something had to be done to make it easier on HQ and us, I'd personally rather see "reorganizing" than "diverting". If HQ already comes here to find out what's going on, as I do and the rest of us seem to, I would hate to see everyone have to go to yet another website for the stuff we come here to find.
This is the best one-stop-shopping site for RP info that I've seen.
Suggestion:
- Include some categories on the forum page in addition to the general threads, so people could find "at-a-glance" info and comments on specific topics, such as money-bombs, ads, etc.
- Keep and expand the "active forum topics" along the right of the site for us to see the latest on everything.
If M Nystrom can and would be willing to do this, maybe we could have the best of both worlds, for our benefit as well as HQ's.
It's good that people's wheels are turning. You guys have accomplished so much!
Hell Yes
I think this is a great idea! Let HQ come up with a daily update of things they are working on such as various tv comercial samples, mailers, advertisements, strategies and just post them on the Ron Paul site with some means of allowing people to vote (one per ip please to prevent opponents from manipulating it). Then we just vote on these samples with maybe a 5 star rating system similar to you tube video ratings.
This would give HQ great feedback from us and know where to focus their firepower. We MUST focus our firepower since we are late in the game and behind too.
A good tech guy should be able to crank this out under 6 hours no problem. Then just stick some college kid in front of a computer 24 hrs a day monitoring the grassroots feedback and reporting it back to managers at HQ.
We should have done this months ago but we still can do it if we move fast. All Ron Paul blog and news sites can be alerted and will quickly become involved.
One last point: I got involved in this campaign mostly because I became so motivated and inspired by watching some of the you tube videos that were made by fans. I submit that we all are GREAT judges of what works to inspire potential supporters since most of us were in some way inspired by either Ron Paul himself or his supporters through written words or spoken words or edited videos.
We have to move fast though.
Lets Rock!
We want so you must pay!
This is collectism, if that is a word, shown in a video on this very site. Are we a mob rule or ruled by law, I ask you? The common good phrase is so abused it no longer means what it used to. The common good got us welfare which in the 1950's was the end to the "Black American Family values" as one congressman put it. I suggest we think about it for one minute more. Are we suggesting we have a right to usurp Ron Paul's right to choose his staff? Can we really promote his message and do that for the common good? We need to work as a team an get around the obstacles just like Ron Paul has done. fight4liberty is right in that we need the 2 way lines of comunication open but to require the vote of the common good is to build the road to mob rule. The internet opened communication in a way that opened our eyes to the truth. We should use this, maybe one webisite where we post our opions, as our medium to talk to the NHQ. The point is this, we are in this as individuals for a cause or a group willing to sway with the popular vote.
This is communication--not collectivism
The campaign would be under no obligation to go with the majority opinion. This would simply be a way of increasing communication between the base supporters and those who are making the decisions.
A lot of energy has been generated from us acting independently--however, as the reports coming out of Iowa suggest, there was a lot of unnecessary chaos as well. As we increase the level of communication and cooperation, we will be able to act with coordination. This is like learning to walk or play the piano--it takes time but when we learn to work together in a way that is self-directed and complementary, this campaign will go into orbit.
What I'd like to see
Never been to moveon.org so if this is a repeat, oh well.
I'd like to see 2 TOP 10 lists of what supporters should be DOING now. List 1 would come from HQ and would be what they think the priorities are. List 2 would be the priorities the community thinks are important. This list could be perhaps voted on or done by committee.
The idea would be to give us supporters something actionable to focus on.
I've got some other ideas but I'll leave it at that to see if there's any interest.
Thanks honus...
...we'll see what others think.
fight4liberty
One day and one state later
Please just consider the fact that in a state that depends heavily on government handouts Dr. Paul still took 10% of the vote when all knew he would end it. Yes we need to change and adapt but to restart from the beginning? I would suggest we take the lesson learned and adapt. I never heard Dr. Paul suggest he is perfect and I think that also applies to all of us and the NHQ. I saw a great post that tried to put forth where we failed I just didn't see where we improved in that post. We really need to look at what worked and what didn't. We don't need to "Rally the troops to War" like Bush and his ilk. We need to change how we do this. We need to get better at it as there is a lot at stake. We need to take this time and look at what YOU did! (as in you, me and them) We could have done better as well as the NHQ but you, me and NHQ need to fix this together! I don't feel we need to push the issue so hard, we need to "talk to people" like I have heard Ron Paul say so many times. We are just one state into this great contest, let us pull together and win the rest!
Go back to the message, FREEDOM!!!! That is what we are fighting for but we need teamwork to achive it. May God bless each and everyone of you. Thanks for listening to my two cents.
Yes, but as actual participants filter back to the other states
we are hearing about the -- well, laughable if it were not so serious -- fiascos of the campaign in very rudimentary things -- databases, phones, phonebanks, and the GOTV effort literally "dying" on the vine (with PEOPLE standing around unable to get anything done because the resources were NOT present). Very sad, and completely avoidable.
Is the campaign is some asinine way trying to PROVE it's own philosophy: that centralized planning always FAILS?
Sorry, but it's either laugh... or cry; probably both in the end.
Bravo! Yes! This Would Send A Fantastic Meta Message!
I totally love this idea. I actually wrote about it briefly tonight in an earlier post. Thank you for filling in much more detail than I did!
From Problem to Solution!
I have been a moveon.org member for years and love all the opportunities I have had there to offer input on ads and even fundamental goals and directions. This challenges me and keeps me engaged.
I also think it would be very newsworthy. What a great headline this could be: "Ron Paul is not only breaking records in his fund raising from individual donors, he is also letting his supporters help him run his campaign!!"
This idea is so congruent with his fundamental message about the problems with top down government.
And, the most effective ads would be aired.
Thousands of brains are better than just a few! Each of us has a unique viewpoint to share, and each of us knows what our own networks are looking for.
Not everyone in the campaign has to be into this, and yet I suggest those who are organize and go for it.
Lets keep this idea hot and moving.
freedom33 says my idea is similar to what moveon.org does!!
Yes, I know what you mean about moveon.org constantly involving their members by giving them things to vote on to input into their setting of goals and which ads do the members like, etc.
I'm a libertarian and not a progressive but I joined them mainly to see how they operate it. I never really thought about it but what I am proposing in this thread has already been done very successfully by moveon.
I like my idea even more now! Thanks for making me aware of this.
fight4liberty
how about
we all go walk a couple precincts and get back to you later?
Our Having Different Passions Supports Our Common Objectives.
I wince a bit when I read posts here that suggest that one form of taking action is better than another.
We do not have to all have the same focus and the same priorities. We are stronger when we honor our diversity. More bases being covered can only help.
Better ads can further inspire someone who has just been visited by someone at their front door.
I vote for us honoring each other as much as possible, even when we see things differently.
Very well said.
Thanks.
fight4liberty
I vote for no change.
Please stop posting this. Give Ron a bit of credit, he has been at this for a bit longer than most.
Freedom For All
I give Ron huge credit for what he is doing. I am in favor of these communication channels so he can do it even better. It is a new game now for him and for all of us. The stakes are high. There is a chance of real change. Why not optimize that chance in every way we can?
You don't have to be on board with this idea.