orenbus
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Reposting this here, this is a great grassroots project that needs some funding help, please pitch in $5 or $10, thanks.
CHIP IN FOR THE PROJECT: http://iowacolleges4rp.chipin.com/iowa-college-ad-project
This is a great project that needs grassroots support to purchase critical ads and generate a Call to Action of Ron Paul supporters in the early states.
Some of you guys may remember the Iowa State article from Barry Snell in the Iowa State Daily where Barry had a chance to sit down with Dr. Paul on his ride to the airport and give us a glimpse of Ron Paul in a casual setting. This is one of the papers being initially targeted for this effort of doing a Call to Action to join and help grassroots activist support in Iowa. Grassroots and volunteer activities is going to be a huge part of whether we succeed or fail in the early states, which determine Ron Paul's candidacy for the rest of the election. I strongly encourage everyone to support this chipin, this is the type of project that can generate a lot of buzz and bring about both activism in Ron Paul supporters and encourage those that are already activists to recruit others to help with critical Canvassing and Get Out the Vote efforts in an early state like Iowa.
http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showth...ct-and-Grassroots-Web-Portal-Chip-in-Included
CHIP IN FOR THE PROJECT: http://iowacolleges4rp.chipin.com/iowa-college-ad-project
This is a great project that needs grassroots support to purchase critical ads and generate a Call to Action of Ron Paul supporters in the early states.
Some of you guys may remember the Iowa State article from Barry Snell in the Iowa State Daily where Barry had a chance to sit down with Dr. Paul on his ride to the airport and give us a glimpse of Ron Paul in a casual setting. This is one of the papers being initially targeted for this effort of doing a Call to Action to join and help grassroots activist support in Iowa. Grassroots and volunteer activities is going to be a huge part of whether we succeed or fail in the early states, which determine Ron Paul's candidacy for the rest of the election. I strongly encourage everyone to support this chipin, this is the type of project that can generate a lot of buzz and bring about both activism in Ron Paul supporters and encourage those that are already activists to recruit others to help with critical Canvassing and Get Out the Vote efforts in an early state like Iowa.
http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showth...ct-and-Grassroots-Web-Portal-Chip-in-Included
CHIP IN FOR THE PROJECT: http://iowacolleges4rp.chipin.com/iowa-college-ad-project
We are implementing a project that will reach the critical demographic in Iowa. We are very popular with the college kids, but organizing them and getting out the vote is a challenge because traditionally they haven't turned out in very large numbers. To deal with this challenge, we urgently need money to roll out this project in a timely manner.
Iowa has three very large public schools: Iowa State University (~18,000 Iowa residents in student body), the University of Iowa in Iowa City (~15,000 Iowa residents in student body), and the University of Northern Iowa (~ 12,000 Iowa residents in student body). Each school has a professional college newspaper that reach a lot of students each run: Iowa State Daily (Iowa State U) and the Daily Iowan (U of Iowa) reach around 12,000 - 14,000 people per run, and the Northern Iowan (U of Northern Iowa) reaches around 8,000 people per run.
TO COMBAT THE SKEPTICS WHO SAY COLLEGE KIDS DON'T READ NEWSPAPERS: We are not targeting college kids in just some newspaper -- we are targeting them through their official COLLEGE newspapers. That is a very big difference that must be understood. Anyone who at some point was a student at a large school that publishes a good campus newspaper will tell you -- college kids love their school newspapers and read them religiously.
Here is the example ad for Iowa State University that will run both IN PRINT and at the newspaper's online site (I credit Justin Page Wood for the design suggestions on which this ad is based):
THE WEBSITE IN THE AD IS NOT AN ACTUAL WEBSITE.
Keep in mind that this "Call To Action" is not meant to convince young people to choose Ron Paul - young people are internet-savvy, and we already have very strong constituency in them everywhere, as the polls show. What we DO need is for that group to get out the vote, to know the Caucus date, to register to vote, and to turn up for Caucuses.
As you may guess from the ad, a vital part of this project is the development and the hosting of a DEDICATED WEB PORTAL (the name of the website in the ad is just a placeholder for now - not an actual website name!).
Our web portal, already in development by RPF user orenbus, will make this happen because we will have the ability to sign people up and group our registrants by location, map their approximate locations via cities/zipcodes/counties, and send them mass emails about grassroots efforts in their local area (such as meet-ups, sign bombs, voter registration, caucus date/place). The website itself will have far greater capabilities than that: the eventual goal is to have data from 2008 primaries as well as current polls to gauge how Ron Paul is doing in various places around the country, so we know where to throw our support (in terms of other ad campaigns in local newspapers I proposed before, geared to different demographics) and link up to the local grassroots in those areas.
For now, the focus is on 3 Iowa colleges. Eventually, we hope to expand this initiative to New Hampshire and South Carolina - other key states where we need the young people to turn out in record numbers for the primaries.
(1) Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa
Iowa State will be targeted via Iowa State Daily (daily printed circulation ~12,500). Online version of the paper is here.
A black-and-white PRINT ad sized roughly 3" X 3" costs approximately $480 for 15 consecutive days (newspaper is printed monday - friday). This is a seriously discounted rate.
The online ad package includes two versions of the same ad: one medium rectangle (a 300 pixel x 250 pixel) ad and a half page ad (300 pixel x 600 pixel). We are allowed 500 hits per day on these ads, and they are rotated through the entire newspaper website (iowastatedaily.com). The package costs $70 per week, and we want to run it for 3 weeks, to match the time in print edition.
Total ad costs for 3 weeks (online + print): $690.
The website for Iowa State Daily apparently gets a LOT of hits, and currently there is an increased traffic of Ron Paul supporters there because Barry Snell is in the process of publishing a serious of interviews with Ron Paul, which are excellent articles.
(2) University of Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa
The University of Iowa will be targeted via The Daily Iowan (daily printed circulation ~14,500). Online version of the paper is here.
A black-and-white PRINT ad, which is roughly 3" X 3", costs approximately $340 for 5 consecutive days (newspaper is printed monday - friday). This is a discounted 5-day rate, and we want to run this ad for 10 business days days total, which is the duration of 2 weeks.
Every day the ad appears in the print edition, it will also appear on their website at no extra charge except $5/day to link the ad directly to our website, which is very worthwhile.
Total ad costs for 2 weeks (online + print): $740.
(3) University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls, Iowa
The University of Northern Iowa will be targeted via The Northern Iowan (daily printed circulation ~8,000). Online version of the paper is here.
A black-and-white PRINT ad, which is roughly 4" X 3", costs approximately $175 for 4 runs. The newspaper is printed twice a week, Tues and Fri, so this essentially gives us a 2-week advertising period.
With the print ad buy, the online ad costs $50/week, and we want to run that for 2 weeks.
Total ad costs for 2 weeks (online + print): $275.
Summary
In total, we need to raise $2,000 for this Iowa College Ad Project, and we need this money now to get things rolling. November is when we should already be running the advertising, so the web portal needs money to be set up as soon as possible.
Aside from direct costs of advertising, there are development and hosting expenses for the website orenbus is currently developing - they are included in this chip-in. I haven't listed any possible taxes from the ad purchases, as well as Paypal fees from collecting donations, so we are keeping the costs down as much as possible and volunteering a mountain of our personal time to make this initiative happen.
This is where we as the grassroots will be much more nimble than the official campaign because we are essentially an open project, and we are very focused on one very specific task to get it done as quickly and as effectively as possible. We are also picking up the area that the RevPAC is not likely to address. Neither the campaign nor the RevPAC indicated any plans for doing newspaper advertisements in the same capacity as we are planning. Specifically, we will take tangible returns from this project by actually widening the grassroots base and streamlining communications between people in the online communities and events on the ground.
Please support this initiative to help reach out to the college kids in Iowa, enroll them in the grassroots network, and get the vote out for Ron Paul.
CHIP IN FOR THE PROJECT: http://iowacolleges4rp.chipin.com/iowa-college-ad-project
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