Friday, April 24, 2009

The newest addition to 46dems.com

On Wednesday night, Kathryn and I finally set up what Betty has been asking for. We are now able to take donations and membership dues online!

Kathryn and Stan put a lot of work into a point by point comparison between 8 different options to accept online payments. They finally settled on Click and Pledge, after determining that the costs for their services were overall more reasonable for our purposes.

Raymond T. Cole Fund Committee

On April 16th, the 46th District Membership passed a motion creating the Raymond T. Cole Fund, and asking me as chair to appoint the members of the Raymond T. Cole Fund Committee in collaboration with the chair of the Finance Committee, Kathryn Lewis.

In selecting the members of this committee, Kathryn and I set 3 main goals. First, we needed members of the Executive Board to ensure a secure connection with the core leadership team of the district. Second, we wanted to identify people who had worked with Ray while he was Treasurer and an active member of our community in order to help ensure that his values and dreams are part of the discussion of criteria and selection of ideas and projects. Third, we wanted to encourage new people to be involved and bring forward ideas and energy that we might not otherwise see.

Given those goals, I have selected the following people to be members of the Raymond T. Cole Fund Committee:

* Javier Valdez
* Jan Ames
* Pat Emerson
* Stan Moffett
* Betty Means
* Jason Sawatzki
* Janet Miller
* Kathryn Lewis
* Mariah Voutilainen

Per the bylaws, I am also a defacto member of all committees, and I will be very engaged with the process of developing criteria and the selection of ideas. However, because I plan to bring a lot of ideas to the committee myself, I am going to leave most of the organizational work to the nine members so as to avoid undo influence on the process. Ray's primary personal focus was ethics, and I see my role as chair as one of establishing the foundation and supporting the work of others. I have every faith in the members of the committee.

This Committee, and the Fund itself, is a new road for us as an organization. We have the potential to have a huge impact in North Seattle, King County, and Washington State. The more we can extend our opportunities into the future, the better. There is no box.

Let's go change the world.

Thursday, April 02, 2009

Notes from the Chair, April 2009

I am relatively new to politics in North Seattle. I only got involved in 2003, when I volunteered to help build our website. The 46th District Democrats has a long and proud history, most of which I honestly am not familiar with.

Part of that history, and a clear indication of the dedication of past members to our cause, revealed itself this past month when I received a notification letter from the Raymond T. Cole Trust. Ray was the Treasurer of the 46th for a number of years in the 1990’s.

We have been given a gift. It’s not huge, but it is substantial. I see it as an opportunity to build our organization, in order to fulfill our mission in ways that we have yet to imagine.

There is a story about a woman who gets a goldfish and a small fishbowl, and when she went to clean that bowl she put the goldfish in the bathtub. She cleaned the bowl and returned to find the goldfish swimming in a small fishbowl sized circle, not understanding that he had the whole bathtub to explore. That is where I see the Democratic Party, swimming our small circles inside imaginary walls. To explore our new horizon and find new opportunities, we need your help. Specifically, we need your ideas.

What are your “Big Ideas” on what a party organization could do? Some ideas that I’ve heard already are extra trainings for activists, both inside the district and around the county or state. We could help provide transportation to big events, like our state committee meetings, by renting a bus to pick up people from around the Seattle area who need to travel across the state. Or we could make some long term capital expenditures.

I do want to make some things clear. This gift does not replace the budget that we passed in March. We still need your membership, and we still need your participation. In fact, we need it now more than ever. More opportunities for activism means more opportunities for activists, and that means you.

It’s also important to mention that this gift was to the “46th District Democrats”. That’s not just me, and that’s not just the Executive Board. That means all of us. So, we need ideas from everyone, thinking outside the box about how we can best use this gift to accomplish our mission. I have posted a copy of Ray’s obituary on our website, and you can read more about him on page 4 of the April newsletter. The Executive Board will be discussing criteria for evaluating the ideas that come in.

What do you think? What can you imagine? Contact me.

Chad Lupkes
Chair, 46th District Democrats