Young Democrats: National News

YDA Spring Conference and 1st Annual Revolution Roast

Thu, 24 May 2007 18:22:17 GMT

by Andrea Pagano (DC)

Young Democrats from across the country joined together in Omaha, Nebraska last weekend for a full weekend of trainings, speakers, and fun! From New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson's address to the Young Dems to the Roasting of YDA President, Chris Gallaway - Omaha was definitely buzzing with excitement. Click here to view a summary of the weekend with a video and photos!

As I say goodbye to YDA...

Wed, 21 Feb 2007 21:35:37 GMT

by YDA Executive Director, Jane Fleming (DC)

As you know, over these past three years I have had the honor of working for YDA. I say honor because there are few professional accomplishments that I have been part of that have been more rewarding to me personally, or to the many issues and concerns I know we both share about our nation's future.

For any organization to grow it must take steps to continually renew itself and, as such, find a time to transition its leadership. I am pleased to announce that the time for such a change is right for both YDA as an organization and for me personally.

Therefore, starting March 12th we will have a new Executive Director in place which we will announce later this week. I hope you will join me in my excitement at having them take YDA to the next level. Chris Gallaway, the YDA President, and the other officers are on board until our national elections this July.

Let me take this opportunity to say that the next level will be building on an incredibly successful last few years we have enjoyed. Together, with our officers, national and state staff members, local chapter leaders and donors, we have grown YDA into a powerful political organization that is building strong chapters and a solid bloc of young Democratic voters.

We took YDA from an organization of only one person to a staff of five in the national office, four state Executive Directors, and hundreds of staff on the ground during elections.
We increased our budget from $70,000 a year to an average of $1 million a year which includes a major growth of small donor revenue from just $10,000 to now almost $50,000 annually.
We expanded from 32 chartered YDA state and US territory chapters to 46 and added hundreds more on a community level bringing the total to over 1,200 local chapters.
We grew our email list from 15,000 to over 150,000 subscribers.
We broadened our quarterly conferences and national convention to be true partnerships with host states. These meetings now include in-depth training sessions and materials for YDA members to bring home to their communities and replicate on a local level.
We professionalized our internal systems and policies and created a new Board of Directors, which includes YDA elected officers, to provide strategic guidance and oversight for our growing organization.
We joined, as the only youth Democratic group, the America Votes table in order to coordinate our field efforts with other progressive partners.
We developed a new "look" for YDA which includes press and fundraising materials as well as a website that lists all of our events, blogs, YDA manuals and research on youth voting. Our website also includes a new online store where chapters and members can buy Young Dem gear.
Since 2004, we contacted over 450,000 young people in 14 states with our Alliance peer-to-peer field program resulting in a 12% increase in the youth vote.

Our most notable success is that together we shifted the national dialogue about young voters. Before 2004, conventional wisdom held that young people don't vote and can't be counted on as a bloc for Democrats. Through YDA's groundbreaking Alliance peer-to-peer program and partnerships with allied youth groups, we fundamentally changed that perception. The attention is finally shifting to recognize the power of young voters. We are the winning difference for Democrats. The YDA Alliance program and the work our chapters do on the ground will continue to shape and lead the Party.

All in all, I am excited to be handing over a fiscally healthy, professional and robust organization to a new leader and look forward to seeing many of you in my new role as Executive Director of the Young Voter Pac as well as in my new home in Nebraska. Please feel free to email me at jane [at] yda [dot] org (until April 12, 2006) or jane [at] youngvoterpac [dot] org.

Democratically yours,
Jane Fleming

PS: Take a look at our new fundraising materials and let us know what you think. YDA fundraising folder.pdf and yda fundraising brochure.pdf

Call for submissions for YDA eNewsletter

Tue, 19 Dec 2006 06:58:03 GMT

Fellow Young Democrats,

As some of you know, a number of folks including YDA Communications Director, Crystal Strait; YDA Executive Director, Jane Fleming; and me have been working to compile an eNewsletters for YDA. One of our biggest challenges has been a lack of content so I’m writing to you today to ask you to submit articles for the “YDA Pace.”

Here are key components that would be great to see in a submission:

Headline – what would you like the title of the article to be?
Byline – who authored the article; please include your state/territory
Article – the full text of the article
Summary (optional) – If you can summarize your submission in 255 characters or less, that would help for compiling.

Please submit by sending your submission via email to yda-official@yahoogroups.com with “FOR PACE:”, headline, and byline in the in the subject line. This email list will continue to be moderated to prevent spam but since this email list may get more traffic, you may want to switch to daily digest format.

Non-spam submissions will go out to the yda-official@yahoogroups.com list (~3,000) and then be compiled periodically into eNewsletter format for distribution to YDA’s larger opt-in list (~25,000)

Here’s an example:

Subject: FOR PACE: Young Democrat Elected to State Legislature by Rob Dolin (WA)

Body: Young Democrats Derek Kilmer and Eric Oemig were elected to the Washington state legislature in November. Both were assisted by targeted “campaign invasions” from the Young Democrats of Washington…

Here are some ideas for submissions:

Repots of successful political campaign activities
Successful legislative engagement
Coverage of YD’s in the media
Successful fundraising events or programs
Community service activities
Pictures, videos, or other material promoting the Young Democrats

Thanks—
--Rob Dolin, YDA Secretary

P.S. I have a backlog of a few articles that I’ll be forwarding to this list to clear my queue and give some additional examples.

Join YDA in Jackson, MS for the Fall Conference

Mon, 04 Sep 2006 22:27:59 GMT

YDA is proud to announce the location of our next conference will be in Jackson, Mississippi on November 17-19, 2006. The Young Democrats of Mississippi will be wonderful hosts and we are excited to spend some time in the south after the elections.

The conference registration fee of $25 per person includes lunch on Saturday and all training materials.

Register Today!

The registration fee does not include the hotel room fees. Reserve your room today for the special rate of $129.00, by calling 1-800-256-9194 and say you are with the “YDA Group.”

Check www.yda.org for more information.

Welcome

Mon, 23 Jan 2006 00:17:25 GMT

Welcome to the home of Young Democrats of America on MSN Spaces

Visit the YDA website: www.yda.org