[Iowa-dx] A vision for IAGP's future...

[Richard Johnson]

On Mon, 20 Nov 2006 21:25:43 -0600, "Daryl Northrop - Co Chair Iowa
Green Party" <dnorthrop@PolkCoGreens.org> said:
> Lets start a discussion about where we want to see the IAGP in 5yrs, and 
> how we want to get there. How many county chapters do we want? How many 
> registered greens should we aim to recruit? How many candidates should 
> we run, and in what races, and where? What should our outreach 
> activities be focused on? What else needs to be mentioned?


Thanks for starting this thread.  Yes, we do need to adopt a long-term
vision, and wrestle with the hard questions that it might raise.  Here's
what I hope to see in 5 years.

1) A doubling of the number of active county chapters in the state. 
Whether these are single-county or multi-county entities is less
important than the fact that they be active in keeping the Green message
alive in their respective areas, and have enough people (however many
that might be) to build a core group that will foster future growth. 
This can be reached if each one of our current county groups simply
adopts an inactive county and works with them by helping recruit and
train local leaders, and then encourages those leaders to reach out to
other like-minded people and groups in their counties.

2) An increase in the treasury of our state party so that the state
party can begin being a stronger support mechanism for our candidates at
the local and state level.  Much of the energy for local campaigns needs
to come from those local areas involved.  However, the state has a role
to play in supporting those local groups and candidates with publicity
(flyers, distribution of press releases, scripts for radio ads, etc.)
and  training for campaign workers.  This means we need to work on
building the giving base through the sustained contribution program
(reminder to self, fill out the dang paperwork and get it sent in).

3) Development of a training program for campaign workers.  This can
either be a program using GP personnel from the state or national level,
or using personnel from an outside group.  I believe a train-the-trainer
approach works the best with things like this, so we could start by
having someone with some training experience work with a group of 10-12
people in the state who would commit to using this information to train
others in their counties and the surrounding area.  These folks would
then become a training team, helping campaigns understand the
ins-and-outs of campaign law, procedures, publicity, and running an
effective campaign.

More to come later...have to head off to work.

Rick

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