Re-Election Announcement Letter
(February 2005)

Dear Friends,

A little more than two years ago, I first announced my candidacy for President of the Young Democrats of America. At that time, I said that we must be able to set and meet goals not only with dollar amounts and warm bodies, but also with ideals and broad vision. As I believed then, and continue to strive for now, we need to provide money and resources to our state and local chapters. We also must be a forum for training leaders, building diversity, and crafting the tools of democracy, not only for the next election, but for all future elections.

I said that we must be a voice for young people both inside and outside of the Democratic Party. We must reward activism and display conviction on the critical issues of today, while respecting the vibrant diversity that makes our Party and movement great.

The last 18 months of my life have been committed to ensuring that YDA’s work not only made a difference in the 2004 Election, but that it established our organization as a credible political force within the progressive community. I am writing today to ask for your support as I seek a second term as your President, and continue to move forward with this agenda.

During the next two years we must lay the groundwork for years to come if we are going to be truly successful. This work revolves around three critical areas: members, message, and money.

• YDA must always be growing and expanding our base to increasingly diverse constituencies and potential supporters. The Young Voter Alliance was a major leap forward for YDA, allowing us to formalize partnerships with other major youth organizations, and establish ourselves at America Votes, the largest coalition of membership based organizations in the country. We grew our email list from 3,500 addresses to 26,000 in less than five months. We must continue this exponential growth if we are to successfully reach membership levels of an established national organization.
• Young voters, supporters, and potential members must continue to hear from YDA. We are the best messenger to reach other young voters, and while we have done more than ever before to deliver our message, we must continue to build on that success. This past year, YDA was featured in over 80 print news stories, appeared on CNN, MSNBC, and was featured in Spin Magazine, Smack-Down-Your-Vote, and many other venues. We will continue to build our message delivery capacity, and focus on critical issues such as social security and judicial nominations to make sure that the voices of young people are heard.
• For any of our programs to be successful, we need ongoing, consistent funding. In 2004, YDA raised $1.2 million, almost twice as much as we spent in the 2000 and 2002 election cycles combined. While our major program money came from an unprecedented core of large donors, for the first time in history, YDA established an ongoing small donor sustaining program to reach the grassroots funding sources we will need to survive. For the long-term of YDA, the 200 people who give us $8.50 a month on their credit card or checking account are just as critical as the hundred-thousand dollar donors who are investing in our programs.

The success we had in 2004 is a direct result of the professionalizing of our organization over the last two years. The confidence of major donors to give us hundreds of thousands of dollars was based on our vision of a professional political organization that delivered tangible results. That same vision and confidence gave us the ability to establish ourselves at the America Votes coalition table, and to become an organization that employed over 500 grassroots organizers in 2004. All of these are major successes for an organization that faced a very uncertain future less than three years ago because of campaign finance laws.

I hope that over the next few months we will have an opportunity to have a real exchange about many of these ideas, as well as your ideas, for YDA’s future. As we continue this dialogue through the summer, I hope to again earn your support and your vote for a second term. I look forward to talking with you soon.

Sincerely,

Chris Gallaway