Unified Membership Plan

UMP was the Unified Membership Plan that specified how the Libertarian National Committee (LNC) and the state parties shared membership and dues. It was terminated in 2005, with the LNC adhering to the termination clause of the contract that left it making diminishing payments for the next year. The following is a description of how the plan existed while it was in effect. Note that the standard for joining the national party is signing the membership oath, not paying money. At the 2006 National Convention, a category 'sustaining member' to identify people who had recently paid money to the party or were life members, and were also members, was created.

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Some states follow UMP-II. For UMP and UMP-II states, a member joins both the LNC and the state party with a single check and membership application. Some states are not covered under either version of UMP. For these states, membership in the LNC and the state party are completely separate.

LNC Obligations

The UMP contract specifies LNC obligations. The obligations of particular interest are Transfer Fees and Database Dumps.

Transfer Fees to the State

The Transfer Fee is paid monthly.

The categories have been given names, but the author does not know which names correspond to what level of contribution.

Category	Prior 12-month contributions		Transfer Fee to State
	Minimum	Maximum
1	$10	$99.99	$1
2	$100	$249.99	$2
3	$250	$499.99	$3
4	$500	$999.99	$4
5	$1000	none	$5

LNC Database Dump

What follows is from the UMP contract and is not representative of the present database dumps, March 2005.

An LNC Database Update that is available in any of several formats including ASCII comma delimited, ASCII tab delimited, ASCII fixed field or dBase/FoxPro compatible .dbf. The file will contain ALL records which contain a YOUR STATE mailing address, regardless of their membership or subscription status. Fields include:

• name
• postal mailing address
• telephone numbers
• LNC id number
• LPUS expiration date
• date the record was originally created
• LNC source code for the record
• flags which indicate records that are:
  • duplicates
  • deactivated
  • should receive no external mail
  • should receive no phone calls
• a field indicating how many times a record has had mail returned due to some address problem.

This format may be changed in the future at the discretion of LNC but will be adjusted so that information is available in greater detail, in no case will less information be presented.

State Obligations

Membership

When LPYS or its local affiliates solicits new or renewing members or subscribers, they offer the same categories as those offered by LNC. LPYS and local affiliates also may offer the same categories of combined local-UMP memberships or subscriptions. In either case, LPYS sends to LNC the full amount LNC charges for that category. Any amount remaining, and amounts designated for other purposes such as a separate additional contributions, may be retained by the collector.

LPYS may issue renewal notices before LNC does and, in doing so, gets the first chance to solicit donations from renewing members and subscribers.

UMP II

Some states have a newer agreement with the NLP called UMP-II. This was described in the March 2003 LP News, google cache: [1] Under this plan

• First year payments to the state affiliate are $0.50/month for the first year.
• After the first year, the payments are $1.50/month.
• If the member is recruited by a state affiliate, then the state will keep all but $13 of the initial dues (except for Life Memberships, in which case the affiliate keeps all but $500). In addition, the state party will continue to receive the $0.50/month as mentioned above.

States under UMP-II include the LP of California (LPC), which has its own procedures for sharing dues with its county parties. The LPC Bylaws maintain a 60/40 split of dues with county LP organizations, where the state party keeps 40% of dues disbursements from LPUS and forwards 60% of the dues to the counties. Following the formula described above, the state keeps $0.20/month for members who have joined in the previous 12 months, and forwards $0.30/month to the county where that member resides. For members who renew after their first 12 months, the state keeps $0.60/month and forwards $0.90/month to the county where the member resides.