Pennsylvania Firearm Owners Association
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  1. #1
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    Default PAFOA: Past, Present & Future - Now with Question & Answer Time

    What this is: The following posts are going to touch on some of the points raised by members in other threads recently and hopefully answer some questions about what PAFOA was, is, and will be in the future. Additionally, I will be taking questions in response to this thread and answering them to the best of my ability.

    How this will work: This thread is closed for posting. With the other recent threads I was overwhelmed with dozens of people making hundreds of posts, there was simply know way to process or answer all the questions and cross posts in any meaningful manner, so in the spirit of more organized Q&A sessions I will be taking questions through PM and answering them in this thread on this schedule:

    12/09/09 Now - 8pm: People may PM me any question they want that are related at least somewhat to the topics in this thread.
    12/09/09 8pm - 10pm: I will answer as many questions as I can in 2 hours.

    After 10pm people may submit follow-up questions, also via PM and I will answer those as soon as I can on (most likely on Thursday after work.)

    Lastly, I would like to apologize if this is a little more "rough" than I was hoping for, I ended up with the flu yesterday (as best I can tell) and spent most of the day writing this in bed while feeling pretty terrible. Hopefully any gaps that exist here can be filled by the Q&A Session.

    OK, Let's go.
    Last edited by danp; December 9th, 2009 at 03:38 PM.
    Dan P, Founder & President, Pennsylvania Firearm Owners Association
    Purchase a Forum SubscriptionBuy some PAFOA MerchandiseHelp PAFOA's Search Engine Ranking


  2. #2
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    Default Re: PAFOA: Past, Present & Future - Now with Question & Answer Time

    THE PAST

    PAFOA started as a discussion forum in 2006 as a result of my personal experience in becoming a firearm owner. I had a difficult time finding information about anything related to firearm ownership. Everything ranging from the laws related to owning and carrying firearms to simple things like where to get suggestions for a local range simply did not exist in Pennsylvania. My goal was to fix that, and being a web developer, making a website was the logical choice. The two paths from there were to either make a one-to-many informational site where I talked and everyone listened or to decentralize it into a many-to-many setup where people could help each other and not depend on me. For many reasons, I obviously I went the latter route.

    To this day I am still absolutely astonished by how well-received this idea would be and how fast it would grow. Unfortunately I also had absolutely no idea how much work it would take to even keep the thing running.

    Which brings us to...
    Last edited by danp; December 9th, 2009 at 03:40 PM.
    Dan P, Founder & President, Pennsylvania Firearm Owners Association
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  3. #3
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    Default Re: PAFOA: Past, Present & Future - Now with Question & Answer Time

    THE PRESENT

    If I had to describe what PAFOA currently is, I would use the word "stable" in a very specific way: It has enough of a foundation to keep chugging along (we have no problem paying our bills, etc.) but not enough to do much more than that.

    The ironic thing about this is (as I've said privately to many members who I meet at rallies and lobbying days) that PAFOA's largest problem right now is a lack of direction and organization, and that the blame for that lies squarely on my shoulders for a lack of leadership.

    The reasons for this are many, but the biggest offender is time. I simply do not have enough of it. To put it in perspective, I probably have (if I'm lucky) about 10-20 hours a week to dedicate to PAFOA and the majority of that time is spent just keeping things running: patching software, updating the advertising, making sure the bills are paid, going through the hundreds of emails and PM's I get, etc.. It leaves very, very little time for much else.

    The only way to solve this problem is with delegation in one of two ways: PAFOA either hires employees, or leverages volunteers, which would allow me to focus more of my time and energy on...
    Dan P, Founder & President, Pennsylvania Firearm Owners Association
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  4. #4
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    Default Re: PAFOA: Past, Present & Future - Now with Question & Answer Time

    THE FUTURE

    Most of the questions being asked by people boils down to "What's the plan?", and it is a completely legitimate question that for a very long time I've always been pretty vague about for one reason:

    I don't like making promises I am not sure I can keep, and because PAFOA is something I do in my spare time, it can be pretty hard to keep promises, especially with regards to when things will happen. Talk is cheap so I prefer not to dispense it until I have something tangible to back it up.

    If we can move forward with the understanding that my vision for right now is just that, something with no due date, I will be happy to expand upon it.

    I intend to organize PAFOA into a more focused and efficient group for the purpose of political action. My hope is that by leveraging the skills, knowledge, and technology that we have available to us, we can get inside the OODA Loop of those that would try to infringe upon our rights and disrupt their plans. I believe that even right now we have the resources available to us to make significant steps in this direction, but they are not focused in a way that maximizes their efficiency.

    Problem: PAFOA doesn't know enough about it's members. The fact is, aside from an email address and some difficult-to-search and not-always-reliable general location information, PAFOA simply doesn't know enough about it's members to do basic political organization. The most important piece of information we could have, your voting district, is not possible to get unless you tell us, or give us your full address, both of which are things we do not even ask anywhere.

    Solution: Around August I started working on a piece of software that I have dubbed "Unity". The idea behind Unity is that it will replace and unify all of the websites that PAFOA runs (that are not third-party software like the forum) with a standard code base and a single-sign-on "PAFOA Account" that can be tied to, but leveraged from a technical standpoint far better than a discussion forum account. From there PAFOA will launch a new site most likely called my.pafoa.org where users can choose to provide more information about who they are and how to contact them. With additional information, PAFOA as an organization can start making smarter decisions. I want to be able to say "There's an anti-gun proposal making the rounds in town X, search unity for every PAFOA Member in that town that has opted-in to receive political action emails", get that list back, and feed it right into our mailing list software for action.

    Problem: There is no way to "join" PAFOA without becoming a forum member. I've talked to a lot of gun owners that simply don't get the forum, or do and don't want any part of it. These people currently have no way to sign up for a simple email list or give us their phone number in case of "emergency".

    Solution: Like the previous answer, the solution to this problem lies in creating a new more formal avenue of "joining" PAFOA. The Unity system will have a separate system of registration and accounts that can be better leveraged by custom code to do what we want. All you need is to sign up with an email and password and then provide whatever other information you want.

    Problem: PAFOA does not aggregate and disseminate information efficiently. While the discussion forum is always on top of things with regards to what is going on in PA, the reality is that not everyone has the time to read the forum or is interested in drinking from a fire hose and having to wade through some of the more "animated" antics of the forum to do it. PAFOA needs to do a far better job of summing it all up for people in an easy-to-consume package.

    Solution: Though it is not used nearly enough, this was and is the original intention for the PAFOA Blog. To solve this problem PAFOA would need to assemble a team of volunteer bloggers who can nicely sum up what is happening in PA on a daily (or even weekly would probably be good enough) basis. They would be responsible for picking through all the news, identifying the stuff that is truly important to PA gun owners, analyzing it, and getting it ready for general consumption.

    Problem: PAFOA as an organization has a small physical footprint that is based in one corner of the state.

    Solution: PAFOA needs to appoint representatives in various areas of the state. My current idea for this would be that every county has a primary and a secondary backup representative. Those representatives are responsible acting as a point of contact for questions and issues relating to their county along with forwarding information related to their county both up and down the "chain of command." For example, if someone in a town in their county alerts them to the fact that their city council is considering some anti-gun measure it would be their responsibility to go up the chain and coordinate with the rest of PAFOA on formulating a response and then organizing that response within their area of responsibility. If this system was put into place and worked it would act as a force multiplier that would allow PAFOA to have a truly state-wide, rapid-response ground presence.

    Problem: To compete with billionaire-backed gun control groups planting their roots firmly in Pennsylvania, we need to find ways to raise money that don't annoy everyone and don't sell our souls to anyone.

    Solution: PAFOA Currently has 4 sources of funding:

    1. Donations: In the entire history of the organization it has only explicitly asked for donations once (to hire a lawyer to help us incorporate.) While there have always been options to support the organization made known, they have always been pretty passive.
    2. Forum Subscriptions: These are basically glorified donations that come with a few perks, they are slightly more advertised, but (in my opinion at least) still not sold very hard.
    3. Advertising: On around October of 2008 PAFOA started running advertising banners first through affiliate programs, and then through direct sale of ads. This program has been very successful in offsetting PAFOA's costs.
    4. Merchandise: Through the cafepress store, PAFOA picks up a few dollars, but it is very minimal, granted it could probably be promoted more.

    The way it's currently set up, PAFOA has multiple sources of funding that each individually bring in enough money to cover the organization's operating costs. This redundancy allows PAFOA to be free from being "held hostage" by any one source of financial support. For example, if an advertiser ever tried to leverage their ad revenue to force the organization to suppress criticism of their product on the forum, the organization would be able to politely refuse and not have to worry how the bills will be paid if the advertiser responds by pulling out.
    Last edited by danp; December 9th, 2009 at 03:38 PM.
    Dan P, Founder & President, Pennsylvania Firearm Owners Association
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  5. #5
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    Default Re: PAFOA: Past, Present & Future - Now with Question & Answer Time

    CONSIDERATIONS

    Now that I've listed a few of the issues I see with the organization and some of my long-term solutions to those problems, I would like to lay out some considerations for people to ponder.

    PACE

    Anyone who has dealt with me has probably recognized by now that I am a "slow and steady wins the race" kind of guy. I am not in any rush to get PAFOA to where I envision it it, especially if I feel that rushing there will result in an inferior end result. I'm only 27, so I would like to think I have decades worth of work to put into PAFOA. I am far more concerned that PAFOA is a strong force for gun rights in 10 years than next year. I can only imagine that for people who want action right away, this is very frustrating.

    DELEGATION OF WORK

    My #1 concern is about how PAFOA will delegate work. PAFOA does not have the resources necessary to begin hiring employees who work directly for PAFOA. This situation leaves us with only one option and that is to leverage volunteers. The problem with this is that there are a lot of potential issues with volunteers that have to be overcome and in some cases make good ones very hard to find:

    • Volunteers can disappear at a moment's notice, leaving a huge problem in someone else's lap. A lot of the work that has to be done isn't going to be much fun, and if it's not fun there's a chance people will simply stop doing it.
    • Volunteers may be more interested in their own agenda than the organizations agenda if they conflict. I think we all know that if you ask 10 gun owners for their opinion you will get somewhere between 15 and 20 answers. In my experience we are a very unique breed of people that are highly individualistic, educated, and opinionated. While these qualities are a core part of why we've been successful as a movement, there are times where a volunteer might have to accept that his personal choice of direction may not be in line with the organizations at that moment. The question then is whether the volunteer will bail out or soldier on. We see these disputes in how things should be done every day on this forum, if such disputes get brought into the organization as a whole it could easily grind everything to a halt.
    • Volunteers may not have the skills that are required. For someone to be a public representative of the organization, it is critical that they know exactly what they are talking about and how to talk about it. For someone to help us manage our ad campaigns, they must have a background in ad campaign management to be successful. For certain specialized tasks, no amount of enthusiasm is enough to actually get the job done.
    • Sometimes the work that should be delegated requires an astronomical amount of trust, for example anything related to the finances of the organization.

    What I (and many other organizers I've talked to over the years) have seen is that it is very hard to find people who have all the qualities, and often when you do they're in such demand that it's very difficult to recruit them.
    Last edited by danp; December 9th, 2009 at 03:44 PM.
    Dan P, Founder & President, Pennsylvania Firearm Owners Association
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  6. #6
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    Default Re: PAFOA: Past, Present & Future - Now with Question & Answer Time

    CONCLUSION

    In closing I hope that this sheds a little bit of light on why and how we got here, where exactly "here" is, and where I would like to see PAFOA go.

    Now it's question and answer time.

    Dan P, Founder & President, Pennsylvania Firearm Owners Association
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  7. #7
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    Default Re: PAFOA: Past, Present & Future - Now with Question & Answer Time

    I wanted to bump this since it's been 2 hours so far and I haven't received any PM's yet.

    I assume this is mostly because people have been at work so I expect most of the questions to come in between 6PM-8PM.

    Either way, bump.
    Dan P, Founder & President, Pennsylvania Firearm Owners Association
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  8. #8
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    Default Re: PAFOA: Past, Present & Future - Now with Question & Answer Time

    One thing I'd like to also ask: Please make sure your questions are very clear.

    A few of the PM's I've got are largely commentary (which is fine) but it makes it hard sometimes to figure out if there's actually a question that needs to be addressed.

    Thank you to everyone who has written in so far!
    Dan P, Founder & President, Pennsylvania Firearm Owners Association
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  9. #9
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    Default Re: PAFOA: Past, Present & Future - Now with Question & Answer Time

    FYI,

    The questions that have come in so far have been great and I've been building up a document of questions/answers.

    I'm going to grab some dinner now and expect to be back around the first deadline. After that I would guess I will have my answers to the first round of questions formatted posted by 9pm'ish.
    Dan P, Founder & President, Pennsylvania Firearm Owners Association
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  10. #10
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    Default Re: PAFOA: Past, Present & Future - Now with Question & Answer Time

    At this point the first round of questions is closed. I will be formatting and posting the questions/responses one-by-one shortly.
    Dan P, Founder & President, Pennsylvania Firearm Owners Association
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