On Wednesday, December 9, 2020, 4:18:11 PM PST, Greg Jan <gregjan4@yahoo.com> wrote:
All,
Our long-time (de facto) Treasurer, Bob Marsh, has submitted his resignation, effective February 1, 2021. While in many ways it will probably be impossible to really replace Bob, we nevertheless must still find Greens who can cover the various key tasks he was doing. So below I’ve listed these financial and computer tasks, within 7 “groupings”.
In order for people to be trained on these tasks, it will be important for us to very soon find others who can do these things — so please volunteer (if you possibly can), and please reply back before Sunday (which is our Holiday Party), if at all possible! (Or if you know of other local Greens who might be able to help, please reply back right away with that info too!). Given the upcoming holidays, it would be great to identify people to help with all of these within the next 7 days, or so! (All of the training can take place in January, but obviously we can’t wait until then to find people to help!). Of course, if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask!
Thank you so much!,
Greg
Tasks we now need help with:
1 — Write Some Checks — Most of our regular payments (such as the phone bill and the campaign reporting program) are automatically taken out of our credit card or checking accounts, so the payments here which we need to make are mostly for “miscellaneous expenses” such as tabling event fees (when we again can table!), donations which we occasionally make (perhaps 4 to 6 donations per year), the annual Business Reply Mail fee, and the annual Political Committee fee. And in election years, paying the Voter Guide printer, paying the mailing house, and paying the mass emailing company. (Plus, when we were meeting at the Niebyl-Proctor Library, paying them once every 3 or 4 months).
2 — Make a Few Paypal Donations — The significant majority of people who make credit card donations to us enter those donations directly into Paypal on their own, but we do occasionally get credit card donations sent to us in the mail after we send out our fundraising letter, or when we do phone banking. So for those, we just enter the credit card info into Paypal ourselves, from the info that we receive. In non-election years these typically average less than one per month, while for election years, there might be an additional 7 to 10 for the Spring primary, and another 7 to 10 for the Fall general election.
3 — Enter Expenses, plus a Few Donations, into our Campaign Reporting Software — When it’s time to file our campaign reports, the expenses and revenues for the particular time period need to be entered into the Campaign Reporting software that we use. Jan Arnold and Aki Tanaka already take care of most of our donations, so what remains to be entered are our expenses (see #1, above — which will all be in our bank and credit card statements), and (perhaps) a few miscellaneous revenues. In non-election years, there are only 2 campaign reports to file during the year (one for the first 6 months of the year, and the other for the last 6 months), while in election years the are 2 additional reports for the Spring primary election, and 2 additional ones for the Fall general election.
4 — Reconcile the Bank and PayPal Statements — Especially when it’s time to file campaign reports, our bank and PayPal statements need to be reconciled, so we can be sure that the reports will be accurate. As mentioned above, in non-election years, there are only 2 campaign reports to file during the year, while in election years the are 2 additional reports for the Spring primary election, and 2 additional ones for the Fall general election.
5 — Check Previous Campaign Report and Print and Send Out New Ones — When it’s time to file campaign reports, we need to check the previous campaign report before completing the new one, and then we must print out and send out the new report. As mentioned above, in non-election years, there are only 2 campaign reports to file during the year, while in election years the are 2 additional reports for the Spring primary election, and 2 additional ones for the Fall general election.
6 — Read the FPPC Material and Check That We’re Doing Things Correctly — The State of California Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) has a bunch of rules that they require political party committees to follow. So we need for someone to read the rules and check that what we’re doing complies with them. Bob will of course give you an overview, but to get all of the details, you’ll need to read the rules yourself. I believe there are probably about 20 to 30 pages of relevant rules to read. And then, about a month before any campaign finance report is due, you should notify the various Greens who are working on the relevant tasks to make sure they complete all of their work in time to file the reports! As mentioned above, in non-election years, there are only 2 campaign reports to file during the year (one for the first 6 months of the year, and the other for the last 6 months), while in election years the are 2 additional reports for the Spring primary election, and 2 additional ones for the Fall general election.
7 — Order and Manage our Voter Databases, especially for Voter Guide Mailings — During election years, we mail our Green Voter Guide to each household that has a registered Green there, except for Greens whom we instead email the link to our online Voter Guide. (Slightly less than half of registered Greens put their email address on their voter registration card, but sometimes those email addresses aren’t actually valid). Because there periodically are always “new Greens” (who move here, or who switch from other party statuses), as well as Greens who move out of the county or are no longer Green, we always order a new database of voters (which contains all of the voters in the county), for both the Spring Primary election, as well as the Fall general election. We then process that new database and provide our mailing house with the data for them to use to mail out our Green Voter Guides. And we also use the new database to print out “walking lists” when we do precinct walking, as well as (occasionally) phone-calling lists. In addition, for candidates who we’ve endorsed, we sometimes provide them with databases for them to use. So we need for someone to take care of our registered voters databases, with almost all of the work happening (obviously) during election years!
The Green Party of Alameda County 