Voice for Democracy

Newsletter of Californians for Electoral Reform

Fall 2005

CfER’s Plans for Growth

Grassroots citizen groups like Californians for Electoral Reform succeed by focusing on three essential areas: policies, programs, and people. "Policies" are the issues and positions that we care about. "Programs" are the key projects we are working on, including statewide legislation and local reform efforts in various cities and counties. Last but not least, our "people" are the core base of supporters and activists who provide us with the resources, energy, and volunteerism to get the job done.

In an all-volunteer organization like CfER, people are our most important asset. They determine our ability to bring about change. So CfER is engaged in a major new effort to grow our organization and increase our membership. Our goal is to double our membership by the end of 2006. To do that, we need your help.

This initiative needs to take many forms, because we must make progess in a number of different areas in order to effectively increase our membership.

One of the first things we are working on is improving communication with our existing members so that we can more fully involve them in our efforts and encourage them to help us bring in new members. We also want to increase the awareness within our membership of all of the great work that we are doing as well as areas where people can volunteer. To accomplish these ends, we have several new communications initiatives, which are just now coming online.

First and probably foremost is our commitment to providing a regular newsletter to our members, something that was lacking from mid-2004 to mid-2005. We now have a process for articles to be submitted by leaders of the organization and a regular schedule for editing and publication. Much of the credit for this goes to Bob Richard, our new Vice President of Communications and newsletter editor.

In addition, we started a new program of general membership conference calls last March. In these calls, all members can join discussions about current electoral reform projects and news. The next conference call will be on January 16 (see this article).

Another initiative, launched in June, is a statewide houseparty program. The goals of the program are to create informal forums in the homes of our members and supporters where we can bring in people new to the movement to learn more about our goals and current projects and hopefully get them involved. The events are a mixture of education, activism, and socializing. Our first houseparty featured both Rob Richie, Executive Director of FairVote - The Center for Voting and Democracy, and California State Senator Debra Bowen, Chair of the Senate Elections, Reapportionment and Constitutional Amendments Committee as guest speakers. We are planning more events like this in the future. The next one, sometime in mid-March, will spread the word about Citizens’ Assemblies (see this article).

We are also working on a new website, which we hope to launch in the next few months. This will make it much easier for people to join CfER online. We will be able to accept PayPal and credit card contributions for membership dues and other donations. In addition to making it easier for people to join CfER, the new website will provide us with dramatically improved functionality for offering news to our members and supporting grassroots activism.

Finally, in the pure nuts and bolts department, we are working to improve our membership processing and service functions. This will include more direct appeals to members who have lapsed to renew their memberships and bring their dues current, as well as regular renewal notices to members close to their expiration dates. If you are receiving this newsletter and have not paid your dues lately, please remember how much we depend on your support in order to keep our organization going.

In summary, we are working harder than ever to make progress on our core policy goals and projects. At the same time, we are building our organization so that we have the people-power we need to get the job done. We appreciate all of your past support, and hope that we can count on you to help us grow.

Rob Dickinson, Executive Vice President