On Grant Writing, Campaign Finance Violations and "Right-Wing Research"

So day 3 of the fellowship has come and almost gone. It's just after 5:30, which means I have been at COFPI for 9 hours (less the 15 minutes I took for lunch today...yes, 15 minutes) and I still have a  little more research to do before I walk home for the night. Despite the longer hours than I was expecting (45/week looks like my upcoming yearly average), I am still so excited about everything we're doing and the work I've been given, which I'm simply not qualified to do, methinks. 

This morning I went to the America Votes headquarters, which is serving as a technological headquarters for a group COFPI is involved with. It's called the (c) 3 Roundtable, and consists of 30 501(c)3 nonprofit groups here in Denver. Essentially, it makes it easier for the leaders of these groups to organize their outreach and action strategies for particular initiatives and laws while also acting as a data-sharing service, so that we can all access one another's research and publications. Today all we did was set up our GoogleGroup, which lets us share all our documents and create a master calendar. Small steps toward getting organized, but it's a start. 

I got to the office and was told that I had one project: get on the phone with the Secretary of State (who recently won a primary election for Congress, like, last Tuesday), or someone high up in his organization. Seems as though ultra-conservative groups are already pulling out the stops against SAFE, and someone with the campaign had received a mailer soliciting donations from one of these groups, Colorado At Its Best. As an aside, I love how these groups name themselves...apparently, Colorado is at its best when we don't fund education. Hmmm. 

Problem was, this group isn't registered as an issue organization in Colorado, which means it can't send out mailers asking for funding. My job all of this morning and a lot of the afternoon was to research its chairperson, Dennis (big ol' douchebag), and then draft an email to the SAFE lawyers so that they could decide whether or not we are going to sue CAIB for violating campaign finance laws (as I learned today it's specifically Article 6 of Amendment 28 to the Colorado Constitution that they were violating. Again, I digress). 

So after encouraging the lawyers to give us the greenlight for a complaint, Carol gave me yet another task that I feel grossly unqualified for (almost all of my tasks, actually. I do love Carol. More on that later). It seems as though the Gill Foundation, is giving out grants to Colorado-based nonprofits to do outreach and civic engagement. Conveniently, my job is outreach and civic engagement. So I drafted a $20,000 grant proposal today to the Gill Foundation, telling them just why COFPI  should get money to mobilize voters. Grant writing is a special kind of writing. Really, it involves a good amount of bullshitting with just enough substantive political proposals so that you don't sound like you are completely full of it. I think my time at Colorado College trained me well to find that delicate balance. 

Before I get back to the last bit of work I have before leaving tonight, let's go back to Carol. So Carol Hedges is downright awesome. Her office is right across the hall from mine, and she always makes fun of me when I know something I'm not supposed to. Funny story: First day, 10:30 am, Carol and Kathy (the director of COFPI) were curious whether cigarettes were taxed on Indian reservations in Colorado. I chimed in and told them no, but that New York state had recently started a tax like that, and they kind of just looked at me. Carol told me to leave, and to come back when I had something I didn't know about. Kathy just laughed. Between telling me stories about tons of really powerful people or using the F word in staff meetings, I think Carol and I will have a good time working together this year. 

Well that's all for now. I have work to do before I head out into Capitol Hill for a night on the town. Denver microbrews, here I come.