Meetups and the FEC

[bernie]

I just began reading the FEC guidlines, and came across the part thet say we need to file within 10 days of hitting $1000 in donations. It also stated that we can not use Ron's name.

Help me out with this one guys.

What are you doing?

[Cowlesy]

Our group has not raised $1,000 for any project or accumulated donations for any group of projects close to $1,000. If your concern is the Meetup Competition, those donations were not made to your Meetup group, but rather to the official Presidential Campaign Committee.

[bernie]

we have collected dues, sold some tees and handmade signs.

[kylejack]

we have collected dues, sold some tees and handmade signs.

If you've collected $1K you need to take Ron Paul out of the name of your meetup.

[ghemminger]

Anything else we need to do after we hit the 1k mark?

[John P Slevin]

bernie,

Yes, there are many restrictions, on contributions you take in and on how you spend and there are very serious problems if you make mistakes or just piss off the FEC.

there is ALOT you have to do. Realize that you have a limit on expenditures toward Ron Paul, typically 5,000.00 to any federal candidate (actually, that's the hard limit, though there are some allowances for what is actually spent toward supporting the candidate, and what is an specific, exempted expense of the committee).

As a general rule, you won't be able to spend more than 5,000.00 toward Ron Paul's candidacy and no one will be able to give you more than 2,300.00

The "Independent Expenditure" committee option gives you some more freedom on expenditures, but you will have to stick to the 2,300.00 per donor limit. Then, there is the option of choosing a 527 (which is an IRS filing).

If you have questions, feel free to ask, directaction@yahoo.com

As a general guideline for anyone choosing to become a PAC to support Ron Paul, there are serious problems with this approach. the blimp project people got ALOT right with their approach, so I suggest, read the fec.gov info, and learn about why the blimp people went the way they did...hopefully, some more people will become innovative freedom fighters like those blimpers.