Housekeeping Issues for the Club

Fundraising

I’d like the club to commit to having an August 8th election watch party as its first fundraiser. I am making some calls to see if we can get some great guest speakers and gauge if we can manage a big or a small event - or if there is even any interest? Do you have any contacts with someone that would be a great guest speaker?

As I learn more I will keep you informed. Ideally, I’d like to plan a quad county watch party for Huron, Erie, Lorain, and Cuyahoga counties. Please email, call, or text if you would be interested in helping to put on such an event.

Let me know your opinion!

The Lorain Leader

Honey Howard has stepped up and wants to head the development of a political newspaper (The Lorain Leader). A political newspaper, once established, would be a steady source of income for the group - and would dramatically help the Republican cause in Lorain County.

Honey is looking for help and assistance in getting the newspaper up and running. She is hoping to meet a launch date of September 11th and to put out monthly newspapers thereafter.

Would you be interested in writing articles? Would you be interested in a sales position? Please check out the new Volunteer Board for announced positions - paid and unpaid positions are available.

We’ve signed up for Wave Accounting which is a totally free application that handles the bookkeeping professionally and keeps the books balanced. We’ve taken the liberty to set up our finances to test it out. The software came highly recommended for Groups, Clubs, and even County Parties to use. For those of you that purchased a membership, you may have received a receipt - please check your email. This is just one of the many functions of this software.

The feature that non-profit and political groups love best - is that any member can be given viewer access so they can examine the books any time time they want.

We are trialling this software now - but will vote on its continued use at the next meeting. It is a free-forever product that has premium services within it that allows Wave to make money - but the use of premium services is totally optional.

Zeffy is another totally free platform that allows us to sell our memberships online. What is nice is that it keeps track of our membership and sends out an email when it is ready to reinvest in the club.

• Zeffy is also an events management program that we can use to sell tickets (like eventbrite) online.

• Zeffy can be used to sell club products online - like t-shirts and hats.

• Zeffy can be used to sell raffle tickets inperson and online.

We are trialing Zeffy now. Zeffy is a totally free product. How does Zeffy make money? Every transaction gives donors the opportunity to make a small donation to Zeffy - but that is totally optional. Feel free to select other amount and put $0 in when Zeffy asks for a donation.

In comparison PayPal, for instance, costs us 3.9% plus $.25 per transaction. Stripe is a little cheaper than Paypal - but Zeffy is free. That is hard to beat!

Requests

The Ohio Federation of Republican Women has asked that we participate in a program of tracking the volunteer hours of club members so they can demonstrate how valuable women are to Republican candidates and Conservative activism. These are any hours you spend volunteering for a political campaign whether that is for a candidate, issue, or piece of legislation.

I know that this is something that members will probably not gravitate towards. It is always hard to get people to track their hours. Verified volunteer hours helps the group gain networking credibility (political clout) with politicos and helps the club gain more traction with donors so the organization can do more things.

To help our members we signed up with - a free service called CLOCKIFY. It is what other political groups in neighboring states like Indiana and Michigan are using to help track the political activism of their members.

While this software is set up typically for businesses - many nonprofits use this to track volunteers hours - to show donors how their donations help to amplify their work.

We are trialing Clockify now. If you are a member and you would like to use the software - we already have it setup up for our group - so you don’t have to set it up. You can download the app as well. We will have some training on how to use the app and software at the next meeting on July 29th. If you want to start earlier just email me and let me know and we’ll get you set up.

NEW!!!

A Volunteer Jobs Board

We saw an unmet need and we are trying to fulfill it. The Lorain County Republican Party has no volunteer jobs board to let people know how their time, energy, and money can be valuable to the party.

We are determined to help candidates and clubs to connect with volunteers. If you are a candidate or club leader and want something up on the volunteer board you can email us and we’ll send you a google document to fill out.

We have a lot more going on - but we’ll save that for another news letter. Please don’t forget our next meeting on July 29th @2pm at the Avon Public Library - 3785 Harvest Drive Avon, OH 44011