Calling Courageous Leaders
The Courageous Leaders Fund Fuels a New Generation of Innovative Talent to Reimagine Congress
Today, I’m excited to announce THE COURAGEOUS LEADERS FUND - a new model for funding daring leaders seeking to change the status quo in the United States Congress.
The United States Congress has:
Installed three Supreme Court justices and 230 federal judges to transform the Judiciary into an extension of political ideology instead of legal jurisprudence.
The way to change this is, on paper, simple leadership algebra. We cannot hire (vote for) the same people and expect different results. We need to support new leaders to do new things and demand higher quality results.
In practice, however, money makes this really difficult. Or, to be clear – the need for a LOT of money to be able to tell an entire state of people (or district) “I’m here. This is who I am. This is why you should vote for me.”
THE COURAGEOUS LEADERS FUND will pilot a program for the 2024 election cycle to support leaders with the values, motivation, and role-related fit to serve the public well. While U.S. Congresspeople are elected in their States, their remit is national. Their roles knit the fabric that weaves the whole of our United States together or tears us apart. Their funding can come from across the nation. And that funding dictates how many votes they get in their state.
So, why does money matter so much?
Elections are just like any business that needs to acquire customers. But instead of customers, they are acquiring voters. And as there is a cost of customer acquisition in the private or public company sectors, there is a cost of voter acquisition in the government sector.
Before I jump in, let me first define a few terms for my readers:
Customer (or Voter) Acquisition Cost: The sales and marketing costs required to make sure people know about a product or service and influence them to buy or voter for it.
Brand awareness: The percentage of people who know that a product or service exists.
Market share: The amount of people that buy a product or service.
Getting into Congress requires voter market share (a large percentage of votes). Market share requires brand awareness. Brand awareness costs money (think about the number of TV and podcast ads, direct mail pieces, texts and phone calls you saw or received leading up to the primary in your state - all of that costs campaigning officials a LOT of money).
When you’re a previously elected official or a household name from entertainment or sports, you don’t have to spend as much money on brand awareness because you have it pre-established and the Press automatically covers you. If you’re an innovative, strong leader who comes from, for example, engineering, tech, medicine, science, but you are not a household name, you face this chicken / egg issue. You need money (CHICKEN) to get brand awareness and market share. But you need NAME I.D. from brand awareness and market share (EGG) to get money.
We need to break the chicken / egg problem and give the folks who can make a real difference for all the right reasons a chance. THE COURAGEOUS LEADERS FUND seeks to do just that. We’ll give money, time and networked guidance on campaigning and policy to the candidates we support.
There are 435 people in the United States House of Representative. 124 of them actively seek a big government, fiscally irresponsible solution to repress and oppress women’s rights (you can see all their names on the bill they submitted to block IVF). There are 100 people in the United States Senate. 51 of them seek to do the same thing (see all the Nays on the women’s reproductive health vote). These votes belie a larger value set and policy position that is guided by excluding people, especially women, from positions of power and prosperity when we actively need more and different people included in solving for the opportunities and challenges we face across our climate, economy and democracy.
Of the people on these lists, the majority are long-time incumbents. They get free Press, people know their names, and funding flows from existing donor bases. They are already at the top of the mountain, and the system is built such that they can, generally, stay on top.
I want to be part of the crew to help the new people up the mountain and the COURAGEOUS LEADERS Fund is the system to do that.
Thomas Snyder wrote in, on Tyranny:
We need the House and the Senate to be better, to do better, to deliver more consistently and well for all our citizens. We need the people in these institutions to lead for long-term, sustainable inclusive growth. COURAGEOUS LEADERS is an attempt to strengthen the Legislative branch as an institution by bringing strong, bold, visionary and capable leaders to the table to drive better results. We’ll start by funding a small cohort of phenomenal talent for the 119th Congress in November 2024 and test, tune, iterate from there. If you’re interested or know someone who might be, apply here for our COURAGEOUS LEADERS Batch 2024 (CL24)!
As always, comments, compliments and complaints welcome via any of the channels.
New Courageous Leaders Site - lexireese.com - is Mission Control for All Things:
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