Political

Brilliant response to Liberal Democrats Everywhere appeal

UPDATE: Thank you! We’ve now raised enough money to give a special package of support to seven people from areas without Liberal Democrat councillors. Here’s what it is all about…

There are liberals in every community across our country. There are Remainers in every community. But there are not Liberal Democrat councillors.

Getting more Liberal Democrat councillors elected means more councillors working hard to create communities where people feel their views matter and where liberalism wins out over extremism.

You’ll know that for many years I’ve been encouraging people to take the first step to winning by standing candidates in every contest.

It’s great to see the way the culture in the party has been changing on this. But even in this May’s fantastic local elections, the party stood candidates in only just over half the wards up for election.

ALDC has calculated that with more candidates, we would have made around 1,000 net gains this May rather than the 704 we secured.

Many local parties have made fabulous advances. But sadly there are still many areas where we have keen people who don’t yet have the skills and experience to build a winning team and elect Liberal Democrats.

But there’s a solution – and one I’d like your help to achieve.

ALDC’s brilliant Kickstart residential training weekends, followed up by ALDC staff support, have a proven record of helping keen new activists learn what is required to win – and then support them through to winning council seats.

It costs £500 to give a new activist an intensive training and mentoring programme over two Kickstart weekends, followed up with support from ALDC staff, along with access to ALDC templates and all their other support services.

So here’s how you can help more Liberal Democrats win.

I’d like you to help me and other readers of Liberal Democrat Newswire raise £2,000 so ALDC can provide that support package to four new activists from four different areas that are without any Lib Dem councillors currently.

In areas where we’ve not yet started to grow and win, the costs of ALDC membership and going to Kickstart can be a major obstacle. With your help, we can remove that obstacle.

If we raise the money now, that support can kick in ready to help those four run winning council elections at the very next opportunity, next May.

Please donate now.

Each £500 will get another activist that vital support package.

With your help, we can give activists a flying start to get the party winning in areas where we currently have no locally elected voice. Areas where we can start winning council seats. Areas where residents can benefit from our community campaigning and new councillors can put Liberal Democrat values into practice.

Please help make this happen by donating now.

It’s the first time I’ve tried a special fundraising drive like this. As someone who regularly helps provide training at Kickstart, I’m really excited about getting that support to more people.

Let’s make that happen.

4 responses to “Brilliant response to Liberal Democrats Everywhere appeal”

  1. I agree we must always be seeking to improve, no doubt if we had got 1000 we would be saying with a bit more effort, more candidates, better this, better that we could have got 2000!
    704 net gains will in all probability lead to more candidates next year, not necessarily more gains. It is where we do planning and the work.
    Let us not knock what was achieved, it was done against the odds, and has gained the publicity and notice for which we have craved, for how long…………..

  2. The Party structures could help a great deal with ensuring that there is always a candidate.. It should be a golden rule that ‘if there’s an election there is a Liberal Democrat Candidate’ ie, it should be the responsibility of each Region to ensure that a candidate stands everywhere. Every member should be part of a Local Party, by extending a neighbouring Local Party to cover any moribund area. It is the responsibility of the Region to help and support the Local Parties to establish, to build the membership and then to establish additional Local Parties where needed.. and it is for the State Party, backed by the Federal Party to support the Region in that work. If that means providing staff and funding, then that needs to be done, and it must be a priority for the Federal Exec to ensure that the structure works and the funds are allocated to do it. All the training in the world is no substitute for having a functioning internal structure.

  3. Having in the past served on the exec of a small but punchy local party with a great core team, I have seen how severe is the void of support for local parties from Great George St. I now live in an area where the local party is even smaller, and it’s even more apparent that a large portion of the available local activists’ efforts are taken to perform the basic functions of a local party. If only GGS put more of these basic functions on a plate, then fledgling LPs would be able to spend their resources (time and money) growing and campaigning.

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