The Iowa College Ad Project and Grassroots Web Portal - Chip-in Included

This may have been mentioned or maybe I miss something, but if the Caucus is set for a date when the dorms would be closed why not encourage students to push the schools to open them earlier or keep them open later... Every student lives at least 9 months out of the year in Iowa, that is their primary residence... and the school wouldn't want to be seen as putting a huge burden on young people that could prevent them from participating in the electoral process... would they?
 
Is this just for the newspaper and online ads, or is it part of a campaign aimed at energising students as well?
 
Is this just for the newspaper and online ads, or is it part of a campaign aimed at energising students as well?

Yes and no. We are not "selling" Ron Paul in these ads - Ron Paul does that best himself, and he visits campuses a lot - but we aim to energize the student base by encouraging them to get actively involved and to connect to the Ron Paul grassroots base.

The money we are collecting is for print and online ad buys at the 3 Iowa schools and for web hosting expenses associated with running the web portal that we are advertising.
 
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What a wonderful idea!

Thank you - we think so :-)

This may have been mentioned or maybe I miss something, but if the Caucus is set for a date when the dorms would be closed why not encourage students to push the schools to open them earlier or keep them open later... Every student lives at least 9 months out of the year in Iowa, that is their primary residence... and the school wouldn't want to be seen as putting a huge burden on young people that could prevent them from participating in the electoral process... would they?

One of the reasons why we're so determined to run with this campaign is to insure ourselves against uncertainty associated with the upcoming caucus.

So far, we don't even know what the date of the caucus is, so we likely will wait to run the actual ads until the caucus date is set. That way we can get the benefit of advertising the caucus date AND our web portal for grassroots "war room". But if it gets too late in the game and the caucus date is still not set, we will probably have to move with what we got and just advertise to sign up at our web portal. I believe we MUST advertise throughout November in order to get the people connected and informed in time. We can't wait into December.

See, by getting the students to register with us, we can keep on top of what happens in Iowa, we can alert them to caucus changes, alert them to what specifically is going on at their school in terms of caucusing, and what's going on in their local area in terms of Ron Paul meet-ups.

The uncertainty with dates of early state contests throws a monkey wrench into the primary game. But if we can get the student connected with us and on board, we can certainly hedge our bets come the day of the primaries.
 
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We are off to a great start, with $1,080 in the bank for the project as of this writing. A heartfelt thank you to all who donated so far and please keep it coming.

RPF user "orenbus" and I have been busy purchasing domain name for the web portal and purchasing the hosting service from SoftLayer for the web portal, which is being set up and configured as we speak. "orenbus" is the dedicated programmer/developer for our web portal.

At this point, I would like to enlist the help of a graphic designer who would be willing to work with us to give our web portal a snazzy face (color scheme, background(s), buttons, etc), something that says "professional, hip, inviting". When people read our ads and become interested to join our web portal, we want them to arrive at a website that looks great - design is a huge factor in the success of this campaign.

If you are a graphic designer or know of a good one, please come forward and send me a PM on this forum. We can have a look at some of the things you've done before and toss around some design ideas for the site.

I would like to know who designed the Black This Out website (http://www.blackthisout.com/) and would look to implement something in that general style, except of course with different color schemes, backgrounds, etc.
 
CORRECT. The website in the ad is just a placeholder - bogus.

We will roll out the actual web address when we get hosting and domain purchase sorted after some donations start rolling in.

Really, you need donations to get started on the website, huh?
 
Is there a beta of the website to look at?

There will be, in due time. Things don't happen overnight. Currently, we are seeking a graphic designer to help us come up with a nice front end for the site.
 
Basically, as soon as we have a beta version or a screenshot that is presentable to show people, this thread will be the first to be informed about it. But I will not advocate for any such update until we have some kind of a presentable design to go with the backend functionality.

Keep in mind, this website is being developed from the ground up.

We are grateful to those who donated in good faith. In time, when we are ready, we will show people the progress of the project and solicit opinions. That time is still in the future.
 
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61% funded, need more help even $5 or $10 will help

We need a few more donations to get funding for the ads and supporting site. Please donate if you can chipin here:

CHIP IN FOR THE PROJECT: http://iowacolleges4rp.chipin.com/iowa-college-ad-project

This is a very important project that is geared towards making a difference in the early states like Iowa, NH and SC.
 
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