First, let me start by saying thank you to everyone for your confidence in selecting me as your new chairman of the Texas Young Republican Federation. As I stated in my original Announcement of Candidacy, I will bring to this next year a focus on building up our local Republican clubs as we head into the 2012 presidential election.
We have a lot of work to do, and my intention is to hit the ground running. So at our very first board meeting held immediately after the convention, we voted to provide key funding to your new Club Development Director, Jonathan Koch, so that he can immediately start working on a FaceBook advertising strategy that has previously worked well in helping him to establish two other clubs. This strategy will be rolled out first for the smallest clubs and then later for areas we believe we can start new clubs.
Second, at every quarterly board meeting, we will provide leadership training for our club presidents. Our Fall quarterly board meeting will be held in Austin, TX, from November 4 -5, and is being hosted by the CenTex YR’s.
Third, we will organize a large grassroots leadership conference, currently scheduled for February 3 – 4, 2012 in the Dallas – Fort Worth area. A committee was formed to organize the conference, chaired by Megan Higginbotham. This conference will target young conservatives wishing to be involved in effective campaigning, with different seminar topics such as fundraising or social media 2.0, as well as some great speakers. By opening up the conference to both Young Republicans and non-Young Republicans, the event will also serve as a natural means to raise awareness of our organization among younger activists, which should help plug in new activists into existing clubs. Of course, young republicans will also enjoy a registration discount for the event.
In addition, we are currently working on a number of other projects. For example, we are exploring a “website-in-a-box” program, that would roll out a basic website for interested clubs. The websites would already be set-up with best practices and would be hosted on the Texas Young Republicans’ web server. It would allow new or small clubs to focus on building their clubs, instead of re-inventing the wheel with trying to figure out how to start a website. When they are ready, they can move the website to their own server.
Finally, we are also exploring starting a PAC for the Texas Young Republicans. The PAC’s burdensome reporting requirements would be handled by the Texas Young Republicans, but local clubs would be able to raise money for the PAC and then earmark how they would like that money spend during the upcoming election. Again, the goal would be to free the clubs to campaign and develop by removing barriers to their development like campaign reporting requirements or web development technical knowledge.
Thank you for your membership as a Young Republican. You are welcome to email me at chairman@texasyoungrepublicans.com.
Mark C. Brown
Chairman,
Texas Young Republican Federation