Mission: Possible

FSP Mission: Possible – 20,000 Members

New "Activist Center" debuts

<begin "Mission Impossible" theme song>

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to become a key operative in helping the Free State Project grow to 20,000 members and achieve Liberty in Our Lifetime. The risks are few, and the rewards many. The home office cannot be everywhere at once, and so we are depending on you to carry out this mission.

Instructions for Mission: Possible are located at the new Activist Center section of the forum. (Please note, only FSP Members have clearance to post to the Activist Center).

• If you are an FSP Member and have trouble posting to the Activist Center section of the forum, login here to get clearance (by setting "Identify your forum profile as an 'FSP Member' ").

• If you are an existing member but haven't yet set up your account, you may do so here.

• If you are not an FSP Member, but wish to join, please join us now.

Key operatives can choose from a variety of activities, each of which will play a critical part in the success of the Free State Project:

• Activist Roll Call
• Community Liaisons
• Greeters
• Local Groups
• Media Tree
• Shadow Ads
• Sign Someone Up!
• Speakers Bureau

Field operatives accepting these missions will gain experience in activism and can become leaders within the organization. The cumulative efforts of the Activists will achieve the ultimate success of Mission: Possible – uniting 20,000 liberty-lovers in New Hampshire.

To accept this mission, visit the Activist Center on the forum. The mission will continue until the objective has been accomplished. If discovered the secretary will admit all knowledge of the mission. This message will self-destruct in five seconds.

<end "Mission Impossible" theme song>

Cheers,
Amanda Phillips
President, Free State Project
3/8/04

Recruiting Push

The Great FSP Recruiting Push of 2005

As 2004 drew to a close, the FSP leadership took stock of how far we've come, and how far we've left to go. That assessment is still going on, but here are the outlines of the challenge we face and the way we're going to proceed.

Among our strategic goals for 2004, two significant ones remained unsatisfied: the hiring of an executive director and the attainment of 7,000 signed-up FSP Participants. We never raised enough money to hire an executive director; but, on the bright side, our donors have funded many specific publicity projects, such as the NH Flag Preservation Fund, the New London "shadow ad," the Killington, Vermont "shadow ads," and the Baltimore radio ads. Also, many of our donors are now contributing to New Hampshire organizations, such as the New Hampshire Liberty Alliance, Libertarian Party of New Hampshire, Liberty Scholarship Fund, Republican Liberty Caucus of New Hampshire, and many others.

Regarding recruitment, we are now at 6,300+ participants. This number doesn't tell the whole story, though; we have to look at signup rates over time. For a year now, we've been going on the impression that signup rates had fallen significantly, from 6.10 a day before February 2004 to 2.78 a day since. However, the decline has been not nearly that dramatic. In this there is both bad news and a little good news.

First, the bad news, which many have known for a while: many participants who signed up before the state vote began in August 2003 never voted in that election, casting doubt on their commitment to the Project. Since then, several hundred of these participants have confirmed that they would like to remain in the FSP. However, almost two thousand have remained out of contact. We will continue trying to contact these unconfirmed members, while still recognizing that we won't be able to reach all of them.

Since February 2004, we've had a new, more complex system of requiring new signups to confirm their registration. Unconfirmed signups since then have not been included in the count of participants we have on the website. Since February, 3.40 people per day have signed up, but only 2.78 per day have signed up and confirmed their commitment, and are thus counted in the number you see on the front page of the website. If you exclude the previously unconfirmed members from before February 2004, the signup rates before then were only 3.85 per day. Thus, signup rates of "confirmed" participants have declined from 3.85 per day to 2.78 per day, a 28% decline. This decrease, while significant, is well below the decrease reflected by the participant count on the website, which has only accounted for unconfirmed signups within the past year.

This decline is due to a drop in general publicity in the form of newspaper articles, radio interviews, and the like. Before the state vote, we received media attention all over the country. Now we receive a very high level of scrutiny in New Hampshire and sizeable coverage in the Boston market as well, but not nearly as much in the rest of the country. This is the conundrum that we have been facing. Our growth continues to be steady, but it will only increase to the level where it needs to be once we regain momentum outside New England.

So where does the Free State Project stand today?

Since New Hampshire was chosen in October 2003, several dozen families (between 70 and 100 individuals) have already moved to the state, even though the FSP is not yet encouraging people to move. At the same time, we are doing quite a bit to welcome prospective participants to the state and show them around (more on that below).

The FSP's recruiting efforts now take several forms:

1. publicity stunts by our local groups, from leafletting to sidewalk chalking to innovative protests such as freeing Jim Perry from Massachusetts;

2. advertising in libertarian publications such as Reason, Liberty, and LP News;

3. press releases to the mainstream media, usually linked to "shadow advertising" campaigns following up on government abuses of power;

4. radio and TV interviews;

5. direct mail to targeted lists of liberty-friendly people;

6. our annual national event, the Porcupine Freedom Festival;

7. providing welcome guides for people visiting New Hampshire;

8. providing stories on our website of people who've made the move;

9. providing information on events of interest in NH, including successful activism by people who've moved;

10. providing downloadable resources for individual activists looking to recruit new Free Staters.

This year we're ramping up our efforts in almost all these areas. Direct mail we've not used at all until now, but several mailings are going out in the next three weeks. These mailings could increase our signup rates significantly. The birth of the New Hampshire Underground is providing more good news from the state every day. The welcome teams are more organized and are now holding monthly meetings. It's exciting that informal libertarian parties in NH towns are now drawing more people than annual libertarian conventions in large states like Ohio. In the pipeline we have a provocative project that could generate massive nationwide attention. I can't let the cat out of the bag quite yet, but it really has the potential to stir things up if enough people get involved.

If you want to stay abreast of what's happening, even if you haven't (yet!) signed up for the FSP as a future migrator, you should still sign up to receive FSP news and announcements or join our discussion forum. You really don't want to miss out on the biggest libertarian story of the decade.

If you're already an FSP participant but just want to get more involved, then I'd encourage you to sign up for our new Active Activist Army program. This program will give you specific instructions on specific projects to recruit new members. The "Active Activist Army" team is our true "activist corps," the group that will push us forward. If you've been wondering what to do for the FSP, wonder no longer. Just click the Active Activist Army link to sign up, and stand by for the first project.

2003 Lecture - The Free State Project

Cheselka steps down

Matt Cheselka steps down

I have been in a leadership role with the FSP since September 2002. There've been a few ups and downs for both me and the Project since that time. At this point, I'm happy to see that everything is up, which is why it's a good time for me to jump off the leadership wagon and find other ways to be useful to the Project. I am pleased to see that Jean Alexander has been selected to take on the role as Secretary, and I'm even more pleased to see that yet another participant election will be held for the Board seat I'm vacating next month. Thanks to everyone for your support and tolerance. Special thanks goes to those of you who kept me on my toes, and kept the fire nice and hot. I'm very optimistic and excited about the future.

Porc Fest 2004: Video Interview with Steve Cobb - FSP Publicity Director

Video Interview with Steve Cobb - FSP Publicity Director
at Porc Fest '04
(June 2004, Rogers Campground, Lancaster, NH)

Topic	Windows Media (.wmv)		Quick Time (.mov)
	56K	Broad- band	56K	Broad- band
What libertarians want	2.0	7.8	2.5	8.2
FSP Goals	1.6	6.2	2.0	6.4
Decentralization	1.9	7.4	2.4	7.7
FSP in Libertarian Ecosystem	2.2	4.4	2.6	4.5
Is libertarianism really radical?	1.5	5.9	1.9	6.2
Rights of the minority	0.9	3.8	1.2	4.0
Removing the impositions	0.5	1.6	0.6	1.9

Numbers represent file sizes in Mbytes

Note: You may have to experiment a bit to see which of the 4 formats works best for your computer and connection. Some files may "stream" or you may have to download them.